


Dark Star

by Be_eating_you



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Future, Alternate Universe - Horror, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Alternate Universe - Robots & Androids, Angst, Body Horror, Bucky is an android, Bucky is dead, Character Death, Confusion, Existential Crisis, Illustrated, Kidnapping, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Past Bucky Barnes/Steve Rogers, Psychological Horror, Robot Sex, Science Fiction, epilepsy warning: flashing .gif in chapter 9, robot violence, warning: blood, warning: contagion, warning: death, warning: emetophobia, warning: isolation, warning: medical
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2017-07-16
Packaged: 2018-04-27 15:47:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 25
Words: 45,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5054602
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Be_eating_you/pseuds/Be_eating_you
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steve Rogers wakes up to an irregular banging sound in the distance. He is face down in a pool of what appears to be oil, and the android he designed to look like his long dead best friend is heavily damaged but trying to resuscitate him. Steve soon finds that he is missing time and he and the android Bucky are seemingly the sole survivors aboard a space station riddled with a deadly contaminant.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Title Card

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING: This fic should be considered to be a work of sci-fi/horror, and should be approached as such. I have tagged some possible triggers, and will continue to do so as it develops. Individual chapters have warnings in the notes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An illustration to accompany the fic. The actual fic itself starts in chapter 2.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I decided I would do a kind of "title card" or cover for the fic. You can see more of my artwork on [my art Tumblr](http://saelokason.tumblr.com) or [here](http://jbbarnes-is-gq.tumblr.com/tagged/sae-arts-the-art). I plan on doing an accompanying piece for Steve.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something had gone horribly wrong.
> 
> Steve was face down on the grated floor, his breath coming in shallow and ragged pants in his ears. It felt difficult to open his eyes, as if something was weighing the lids down. In the distance, just loud enough to be perceived, there was a heavy pounding sound.
> 
> Wham…WHAM…whamwham….WHAM…
> 
> There was enough irregularity to it that it seemed unnatural, like someone smacking a hammer repeatedly against a wall. It was something intentional, clearly distinguishable from the soft brush of chain against a wall. That was another sound he was aware of. Chains, brushing against a metal wall. The weight on his eyelids was a fluid of some kind. It tasted like oil, which he found out when he involuntarily gasped from breath. What the fuck had happened?

Something had gone horribly wrong.

Steve was face down on the grated floor, his breath coming in shallow and ragged pants in his ears. It felt difficult to open his eyes, as if something was weighing the lids down. In the distance, just loud enough to be perceived, there was a heavy pounding sound. 

_Wham…WHAM…whamwham….WHAM…_

There was enough irregularity to it that it seemed unnatural, like someone smacking a hammer repeatedly against a wall. It was something intentional, clearly distinguishable from the soft brush of chain against a wall. That was another sound he was aware of. Chains, brushing against a metal wall. The weight on his eyelids was a fluid of some kind. It tasted like oil, which he found out when he involuntarily gasped from breath. What the fuck had happened?

There was a sound beside him, sudden and sharp. An electrical charge getting ready to disperse, being primed up. He pushed against the ground with the palms of his hands, making a choking sound in the back of his throat.

“Steve, you’re awake,” a familiar voice came from behind him, followed by the sound of a piece of equipment being powered down and set aside. There was a pressure on his back, “Don’t move, let me help you, please.”

The pressure resolved itself into a hand on his back, then his shoulder, rolling him over. The ceiling flashed by in a confusing array of lights and a face loomed over him. Shit, something had gone really wrong. His breath caught in his throat and he couldn’t keep himself from reaching up and touching the face that was swimming in his vision. 

The android’s skin was warm to the touch, but deteriorated in a way that Steve would never have allowed. He kept his personal machines pristine, and had extended that kind of mindset to the other androids and robotic assistants that he had found aboard the station. All too often, the maintenance synthetic persons were neglected. It didn’t seem to matter how human they tried to make them, how hard the designers tried to elicit a sense of empathy, they were always treated as just another piece of equipment. The B-9658 looking down at Steve was a testament to scientific advances in the field of robotics. 

It also could have been the long lost twin to Steve’s dead best friend, something that Steve never would have admitted to when he pushed forward the design. He had humbly presented the drawings and had made his arguments for why this particular facial configuration would be beneficial to the project. His personal unit was more accurate to life, unlike the ones that were mass produced with a hairstyle Bucky wouldn’t have been caught dead with. Ha. 

Steve had even taken to calling his B-9658 ‘Bucky’. It had felt strange at first, but eventually he had gotten over it. He had invested the time and money into making it as accurate as possible for a reason. All of that really meant nothing as he looked up into Bucky’s face.

The left side of his face was burned, although the synthetic tissue was making an effort to repair itself. Whatever had burned away the skin had left his eye cracked and fogged over with condensation that should never had been able to get into the unit. His usually long hair had been singed down to the scalp on that side, revealing gory patches where the skin had burned away enough to reveal the vibranium skull beneath. Those were all aesthetic things, things that could be repaired with some time and effort in the lab — the eye would have to be completely replaced. No, the most jarring thing to Steve was the structural damage. Bucky’s left arm was just… just fucking gone, as if something had ripped it from the socket. The joints of the B-9658 were made to withstand and resist 2,000 lbs. of pressure. Whatever had ripped Bucky’s arm from the socket had meant business. 

“Holy shit,” Steve gasped, again tasting the oil that was on his lips as his words drew it into his mouth. Bucky was canting his head, staring at him with one functional eye.

“I did the best I could. I’m sorry that I couldn’t do more,” Bucky reached out his right hand and pressed it to Steve’s shoulder again, “do you think you can walk?”

Steve nodded, even though he had no idea if he actually could walk. He wasn’t even exactly sure that he could feel his legs. He reached around himself, searching for his glasses. That distant pounding sound was getting closer, which momentarily drew Bucky’s attention. When he looked back at Steve his expression was strained, almost scared. 

“We don’t have time, I’m sorry,” Bucky said, scooping his arm behind Steve’s back and making him stand. Steve found himself being shuffled forward. The room around him was blurry beyond the field he was able to focus on, but everything about it seemed wrong. The emergency lights were flashing, painting the room in a sickly red hue. Oil, or something like it, had been spilled across the grated floor. Wires coiled around his feet like snakes. He started to turn his head to follow the trail of the wires and oil, but Bucky was pushing him onward, preventing him from even trying to see what was really there.

They stepped out into the hallway and Steve was left to support his own weight. Bucky had the access panel open, activating a security protocol and force sealing the door. Steve could hear the pistons working, and something cracking deep within the structure. He didn’t have much time to think about it because Bucky was back at his side, hustling him down the hallway. 

“Are you going to tell me what happened?” Steve’s words still carried the tainted taste and texture of oil onto his tongue. He tried to spit, but couldn’t get rid of it. His feet sounded heavy on the grating, and he dizzily looked down to see a pair of EMU boots on his feet that he didn’t remember putting on. 

Bucky tilted his head towards Steve, his mouth half opening as if to answer. He was interrupted by the slamming sound, too close and too loud to be imagined. Bucky’s face immediately hardened and he shoved Steve down, pushing him towards a corner with a hissed, “Hide.”

Steve tripped and fumbled over himself into the corner, no thought to do anything but comply with what Bucky had asked him to do. Bucky had sounded too earnest, too… scared. Steve wasn’t exactly sure how to process that. He hugged his knees up against his chest, listening as that irregular slamming sound became heavy footsteps on the grated floor. He couldn’t see what it was, huddled up in the corner as he was. He could just hear and smell. Fuck, whatever it was smelled awful. He couldn’t exactly place what it smelled like but it was somewhere between hot vomit on a sidewalk and rotten meat. Bucky was standing still somewhere in front of him, his weight settled on the grated flooring. Steve found himself holding his breath. 

The footsteps stopped, followed by a few short mechanical sounds. A soft whir of servos and the harsher hiss of pistons. Steve closed his eyes tight. Something about the presence of this… this thing made him feel sick. He’d never felt uncomfortable around synthetics or less advanced robots. Hell, he’d gotten into the field he had because he was so very comfortable around them. There was no reason that those sounds should have made him feel the way they did. It must have been that rotten odor. 

A low, rhythmic beep signaled the initiation of some kind of communication sequence. Steve never would have thought of it as a communication sequence if it weren’t for the fact that Bucky responded. Hearing those harsh, mechanical, beeps come out of the unit he designed and maintained was just wrong. There was no reason for an android to communicate like that. They could speak, or directly interface with a lower machine. That kind of communication had been stripped out standard of coding decades ago. It certainly hadn’t been programmed into the B-9658. Steve finally dared to raise his head and open his eyes. 

Bucky was a blur at the edge of his vision, standing rigid and dark against too bright lights in the hallway. The thing was beyond him, indistinguishable within those lights, though it did seem bulky. The immediate thought that came to Steve was that it looked like a loader, but that was impossible. A loader wouldn’t be wandering around on its own, initiating an antiquated form of communication with an advanced android. The thing shifted, letting out a low sound that Steve more felt in his teeth than heard.

Bucky responded. The sounds coming out of the android couldn’t have been vocalizations. They had a quality to them that seemed muffled, as if they were originating deep within his core structure. Steve lifted his head slightly more, trying to listen in though it was far beyond him to decipher the sounds that he was hearing. 

He recoiled almost as quickly as he had tried to listen in. Something shot out of the dark shape, colliding with Bucky’s left shoulder. The android lost his footing, falling back against the wall while his right hand tried to grasp at the—- the tendril? The cord? The sounds the larger machine was making now were almost deafening, low beeps and mechanical grinding, like the sounds of a warehouse condensed into one machine. 

Seeing Bucky on the ground, forced down by this strange abomination of a machine, made something snap inside of Steve’s head. He couldn’t just sit there and watch this, so what if the Bucky he was watching was “just” a machine. It looked like Bucky, it sounded like Bucky, and he would be fucked if he got engaged in an argument about whether or not robots actually felt anything in that moment— Because shit, it even sounded like Bucky when it screamed. 

Steve was on his feet. He had a piece of grating in his hands that he pulled off the floor as he went, surged on by adrenaline. The thing in front of him became clearer as he ran forward, and holy shit did he wish he couldn’t see it for what it was. It was a loader, or at least, that was the primary structure. The smell he had come to associate with it was surely the desiccated body still in the cabin, surrounded by nodules of fleshy growth that spilled out, black and diseased, inexplicably to the machine itself. The cord that extended from it to Bucky was some horrible amalgamation of organic and synthetic, throbbing with a life it shouldn’t have had. 

Steve saw it as it was, and charged on anyways, swinging the grate as he got close enough. It caught on that living cord and whipped it upwards, away from Bucky. Oil like fluid sprayed from it, arcing over the wall and ceiling. A sound like a distorted, mechanized, scream emanated from somewhere in the loader. It was slow to turn, part of the fleshy growth impeding the movement of the hydraulics that should have operated the legs. Steve did his best not to think about the blank face of the corpse inside the machine and how the head bobbled grossly as the thing tried to move. Instead, he focused on ducking around it, getting behind it to try and lure it away from Bucky.

“Steve, no!” Bucky had, of course, regained his voice. An android couldn’t grow hoarse from pained screams. He was still on the ground, struggling to recover from whatever the thing had done to him. Steve had to buy him time.

He had suddenly found himself in a situation he had no control over, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t get control. There would be time to find out just what the fuck he had gotten himself into, later. The loader was still turning, giving Steve time to start running down the hallway. A broken sign allowed him to somewhat get his bearings. C-83. There would be a utility closet nearby, the thought of which provided Steve with a sense of hope and a thought of escape. The footfalls of the loader were heavy and forceful behind him now, picking up speed. 

Steve skid around the corner, feeling the joint of his ankle role and his fingertips briefly brush against the grated flooring. He forced himself back into balance, listening to the sounds of himself running being drowned out by the thing behind him. He almost ran face first into the wall that bore the utility closet, slamming his palm down against the illuminated panel. 

It wasn’t opening. It beeped twice. Fuck, it wasn’t opening. Steve scrabbled against the wall, levering the panel open and reaching inside. If he were an android, he could just utilize the interface there in the panel, but being human he had to use the wires. Shit, shit, shit, which wire? The thing was almost there, the cloying smell of decay starting to make Steve gag. He pulled at two of the wires, switching their position and almost shit himself when the door hissed open beside him. Swinging himself in, he grabbed the manual handle on the back of the left one and threw his weight into levering it closed. The thing was coming down the hall, the corpse inside of it staring at him lifelessly, head swaying side the side with every awkward step the loader took. The door was closing too slowly. It was coming. It would be there. It was coming…

Steve’s lungs felt like they were on fire. He pushed his feet against the floor, levering the door closed with the last of his strength. His body sagged against the door, not a moment before the machine collided with it. The impact was solid, but the door didn’t budge. The rotten scent of the thing couldn’t even make it through the seal. 

A shaky laugh startled Steve before he even realized he was laughing. He put his hand over his face, sitting in that dark utility closet, listening to a machine batter itself against the door. 

Something had gone horribly, horribly _wrong_.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I worried you were dead,” Bucky said, his grip on Steve firm, “please, don’t do that again. I know that I’m asking that in vain.”

There was no reliable way to tell time in the utility closet, but it felt like hours passed. For awhile, the machine had simply battered itself against the door. Then, it had turned its attention to the access panel. When Steve had first heard it clumsily touching the panel, he had gone pale. Surely, the thing would be in there in a matter of moments.

Then he had heard the first “access denied, security override unavailable”. Hours later (surely it had to have been hours) he was still listening to the droned voice of the AI telling the machine that it couldn't override a security protocol. It had become so monotonous that Steve’s head had started to sag against his chest. His eyes felt heavy and gritty in a manner he associated with overworking in the lab. 

_Access denied…._

_…override…_

He started to drift off despite the stress, slouched against the door. In his dream, Bucky was beside him in the dark, fingers entwined with his.

_Breathe, Stevie, come on… just breathe for me… fuck, don’t—_

Steve was jarred from sleep by the sudden sensation of falling backwards. The utility closet doors had slid open, spilling him backwards onto the grated floor of the hall. He kept his eyes screwed tightly shut, expecting the inevitable blow to the skull that would kill him. Maybe the machine would chuck him in with its corpse pilot. 

The blow never came. He cracked his eye open and found himself looking up Bucky’s legs, the android’s boots on either side of his head. Bucky stared down at him, then shifted to stoop and help him up. 

“I worried you were dead,” Bucky said, his grip on Steve firm, “please, don’t do that again. I know that I’m asking that in vain.”

Steve couldn’t help the bark of laughter that that tore from his throat. Reckless, stupid, behavior was kind of his forte even though it really shouldn’t have been. He was a scientist and an artist, and yet he had grown up always finding himself in the midst of a scrape. Even into his adult life and career he had developed an aptitude for getting himself in situations he shouldn’t have been in. Luckily, adults were more likely to exchange harsh words than punches. At least, in the professional environment. Outside of that? All bets were off, and adults could be far more cruel than any child. 

Bucky was guiding him down the hallway again, his hand still firm on his lower back while he spoke, “You are lucky that I had already initiated the security protocols, otherwise it would have been able to access the utility closet. You are also lucky that I was able to distract it.”

That brought reality back to Steve. He looked at Bucky, taking in the damage to the left side of his face, and asked, “What the fuck was that thing?”

“A compromised loader,” Bucky answered him, as if it that were the most obvious thing in the world and Steve should have been on the same page with what compromised meant, exactly.

“Compromised by what?”

There was a long pause of silence, punctuated by the sounds of their feet on the metal grating. Bucky was thinking, the process accentuated by subtle facial expressions that made Steve’s heart swell with equal measures pride and longing. How long had it really been now, since he had watched those same expressions on a living person? 

“This is difficult to explain,” Bucky started, letting go of Steve long enough so that he could access another panel and open a door, “and it may be best if you are sitting. I also need your assistance.”

Steve looked forward when the doors opened, admitting them to one of the smaller labs. Well, it had been a lab. Steve could make out the shapes of equipment that had been toppled over, and wires dangling out of the ceiling. A terminal was glowing off to his right, but it was hanging at a weird angle that made him anxious about the possibility of touching it. Bucky closed the doors behind them, again helping himself to the panel on the wall to lock them down. Buy them time, Steve thought, before their compromised friend came back. 

This side lab was one that Steve rarely entered, under normal working conditions. It housed computers that constantly monitored the synthesis of nutrients used in food for the entire station. Beyond that, it had testing equipment to ensure a standard of quality. One of the techs assigned to this lab had told Steve that it was basically there to make sure they didn’t all die because one of the machines bungled up a protein strand, transforming something innocuous into something deadly. Steve didn’t really think it was that simple, but he dealt with a different kind of synthesis entirely. The state of this lab made him wonder what his own looked like, and why exactly Bucky had brought him here.

Fuck there were so many things he needed answers to. Bucky was coming back to him with a chair, setting it down beside him in a way that meant he was obviously intended to sit. So, Steve Sat and stared down at the legs of the EMU he didn’t remember putting on. 

“A distress signal was picked up, and a crew dispatched to investigate and respond. The distress signal remained consistent, and further radio contact failed to be established. When the ship was located and boarded, the crew was found to be missing. Escape shuttles were in place, with only one showing evidence of an attempt at boarding,” Bucky spoke in a tone that reminded Steve he was speaking with an android.

“All on board units were gathered in the cargo hold, which had been subject to a security lock down. The units were coated in a black, viscous liquid, some of them having been reconfigured and altered in inexplicable ways. The room smelled heavily and the rescue crew was unable to proceed without further filtering precautions. One of the rescue crew obtained a sample of the fluid before the team returned to the ship.”

Steve put his face in his hands. From an outsider’s perspective, this all sounded like a really bad idea. Why open a cargo bay that had a security lockdown in place? Why take some of the suspect liquid with you? Of course, the rescue crew had probably opened up the cargo bay in search of the ship’s missing crew, and it was fairly standard procedure to sample unidentified substances but shit. Shit. Of course it all went horribly wrong, and of course Steve was the one left standing with the resulting nightmare.

“Of fucking course,” he grumbled, but Bucky ignored him and continued to speak.

“The compound was analyzed when the crew returned to the station. It was found to have similarities to the compounds currently utilized in androids in order to promote self repair and maintenance.”

Steve looked up at Bucky, frowning deep, “Please don’t tell me some idiot injected it into an android.”

Bucky pursed his lips slightly, “A unit was selected to undergo testing. The unit in question had been decommissioned, and the test was to see how the compound would interface with the machine. The unit’s response was unexpected: it came back online and initiated self repairs that had been deemed impossible or too time intensive.”

Steve found himself reeling in anger. Of course, of course some idiot had decided to put some alien compound into one of the machines. Why wouldn’t that be a bad fucking idea? Would they have injected themselves with the shit if they found it was remotely similar to human blood? He was gripping his own hair and leaning back in his chair. 

“There was a rumor that the compound was a Russian advancement that had not been internationally released, as the distressed ship had been Russian in make and registration. Upon reviewing the vessel’s logs, it was discovered that they had come upon the compound in much the same manner. They had taken in a damaged satellite that had been covered in it. After that initial documentation, their logs became erratic and nonsensical. The process of replicating and synthesizing the substance had already been initiated by the time the contents of these logs was dispersed to the crew.”

“Where the fuck was I to tell them this was a stupid idea?” Steve demanded, stopping the chair from swiveling. He had obviously suffered some kind of head injury if he didn’t remember this. It seemed like some important shit to remember.

“You were telling them it was a stupid idea,” Bucky responded, “which Pierce did not take kindly to. You retreated to your quarters and began the process of taking myself and SAM offline so that we would not be exposed to the compound. At this point, it was being referred to as the ‘Lazarus Syrum’, for its ability to bring damaged systems online and repair components.”

Steve nodded, mentally thanking himself for being quick to act. All of the onboard units of the station connected into the same systems to sync up, and replenish their fluids. It was a kind of robot dialysis, that flushed out the old fluids and replaced it with the new. Because of this process, all onboard robotics had the same “blood”. Removing Bucky and SAM from the system would prevent their systems from being flushed. The downside was that it would mean they’d need manual maintenance. Steve paused.

“Where is SAM?”

“I powered SAM down,” Bucky answered, standing up so that he was looking down at Steve, “in order to preserve him. He required maintenance and I was not able to provide it.”

Steve’s brows creased together and he pinched the bridge of his nose. A unit like Sam could go six months without maintenance, off grid. Why the fuck…

“Bucky, how long have I been unconscious?”

Bucky didn’t answer him, so Steve persisted, “Bucky. How long?”

“I’m unable to answer that, Steve.”

“Fine. How long have I been… fuck, I don’t know… out of the loop?”

“I have been unable to speak with you for five months,” Bucky answered, his voice dropping down slightly, “and SAM has been powered down for four. He is safe from contamination. I did everything I could.”

There was something extremely sad about the way that Bucky said that. Something in his tone and the way he held his shoulders. Steve found himself reaching out, pulling the android closer to him by the hand. He found himself rubbing his thumbs over Bucky’s knuckles, trying to soothe him in the same way he would have soothed his departed counterpart. 

“Hey, that’s alright. You did a good job,” Steve reassured him, standing up, “you said you needed assistance? What do you need from me?”

Bucky was watching Steve’s hands on his own, his undamaged eye focusing on the way that Steve’s hands moved. After a moment, he raised his head and spoke, “I need repairs.”

“I don’t know what I can do in this lab, but we can try, huh? Do our best,” Steve stepped away from him, walking towards the broken terminal. He owed Bucky that much, to try and repair him. The android had obviously kept him alive this long, and had looked after his robotic brethren. Steve tapped his fingers against the crooked console, typing in his user ID and password. 

“I did not understand the reference,” Bucky spoke from beyond the console, “to Lazarus, and so I asked you. You told me it was from a Biblical story.”   
“That’s right,” Steve spoke without looking up from the console. Something was, of course, wrong and he was having trouble accessing his files, “resurrection miracle.”

“What happened here was not a miracle,” Bucky’s voice wavered and Steve looked up. An android’s voice shouldn’t waver, not like that, and Bucky had only recently demonstrated his ability to fall into the monotone that Steve disliked in an android. He liked expressiveness in a voice, as hard as that was to capture. Bucky’s features match the tone of his voice, his brows drawn together and his lips pursed into a frown. It was too much like the real Bucky, the friend that Steve had lost years ago. 

“…Hey, come over here,” Steve disrupted the moment, calling the android over to the console, “I need you to help me access these files.”

Bucky was beside him a moment later, the empty socket of his left arm facing Steve. The socket was crusted over with a familiar blue tinted liquid — Bucky had been “bleeding” from the wound. The fluid had started to crystallize where the seal was breached, closing off the wound much in the same way that a scab would. Steve leaned in a little closer. There was something else about the ‘wound’ that seemed…odd. Bucky was quick to pull away from him, gesturing at the console, “Access granted.”

“Thanks, Buck,” Steve watched Bucky walk away from him until he became a blur, passing out of the space where his vision was relatively clear. Bucky didn’t respond.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “This is Commander Carter,” Peggy’s voice cracked to life before he face flickered on the screen. She looked like… well, shit. Her hair was falling out of the neat plaits she usually kept it in. She had a black eye, and the other seemed like it would follow from exhaustion alone. She was leaning against the console while she spoke, “I have gathered what remains of the crew and we are… we’re abandoning the station. We’ve been operating under strict screening procedures, making sure the people who board the ship are… are still people. No robotics.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: medical, blood, isolation, contagion.
> 
> Thank you for reading, and for leaving kudos. They're much appreciated and let me know you're enjoying this little story.

_It is a very mixed blessing… to be brought back from the dead. -Kurt Vonnegut_

The files were a disaster, like everything else around Steve. A human being hadn’t made a log entry in five months. The logs he could find for those five months had been made by the AI, or (seemingly) Bucky. These logs were mundane things, recording that the station was still following its prescribed orbit. Making note of systems that were offline.

Steve was steadily chewing a hole in his lip as he scrolled through the logs, trying to find an indication of himself. Had he been telling Bucky to make the log entries the android had? What the fuck had he been doing for the last five months? He looked up at Bucky, watching the android moving across the room. He was setting up some of the replicators, to facilitate the repairs he’d need. It was going to be one hell of a trick to switch those replicators over, but it was something that Steve could do. 

He was about to get up and join Bucky when he came across an video entry from five months earlier. He was quick to press play, praying there was some kind of explanation to be had. 

“This is Commander Carter,” Peggy’s voice cracked to life before he face flickered on the screen. She looked like… well, shit. Her hair was falling out of the neat plaits she usually kept it in. She had a black eye, and the other seemed like it would follow from exhaustion alone. She was leaning against the console while she spoke, “I have gathered what remains of the crew and we are… we’re abandoning the station. We’ve been operating under strict screening procedures, making sure the people who board the ship are… are still people. No robotics.”

She swallowed heavily and looked down, “We’ve lost a lot of. Of really good people. We weren’t able to initiate a self destruct sequence for the station, so we’re going to have to get help, return. Blow this god forsaken thing up. In lieu of being able to do that before abandoning the station, we’ve set up a broadcast, indicating the station is under quarantine. This message will be available as a part of that broadcast.”

Peggy raised her head again, looking at the camera, “So, if you’re receiving this, for the love of God do not set foot upon the Aditi station. There is an extreme contamination situation there… I don’t even know what to call it. A virus? An organism? We started off referring to it as the Lazarus serum. Injected into a machine, it initiated self repairs that were just… miraculous. It crossed over, it started — look, it started doing things you do not want to see. We’re calling it the Hydra now. If you try to destroy one origin point, one machine carrying the contamination… two more appear. Do not board the station. Commander Carter, now aboard ADEV097 signing out.”

Steve sat in stunned silence after the screen faded to black. They’d evacuated? Without him? He took a sharp intake of breath and patted his hands over his chest, feeling the firmness of the EMU. Raising his hands, he looked at them. They looked the same as they always had. There was some graphite under his nails. He’d been nervously chewing the sides of his fingers, a habit betrayed by the ragged and pink skin. His hands were exactly as he remembered seeing them before all of this, save for the fact that his bony wrists were now sticking out of the cuffs of an EMU. He lowered his hands and looked over at Bucky. 

“Why did they leave me behind?”

Bucky raised his head from what he was working on, “I don’t think we should talk about that right now, Steve.”

“Fuck that, Bucky. Why did they leave me behind?” it came out more venomous than Steve had intended, and he hated himself for the fact that Bucky flinched away from the tone in his voice. Flinching in an android always meant that something had happened that conditioned that kind of response. Five months was a lot of missing time, and Steve couldn’t help but wonder how he had acted in his memory’s absence. 

“You performed a self sacrificing action so that the evacuating crew would be able to reach and seclude the ADEV097,” Bucky came around the side of the replicator while he spoke, “through your actions you guaranteed their survival.”

Steve grit his teeth, hunching his shoulders. That meant there was the distinct possibility he was the only living human on the fucking station. The Aditi was outfitted with enough docking stations to support 230 separate ships. The life support systems were capable of handling the population of a major metropolitan city. 

And he was alone. Alone with the machines. 

“Are there any other survivors, Bucky? Any other humans left?”

Bucky pursed his lips in that all too familiar and painful expression, “You are the only one capable of a human level of cognition and self recognition.”

“That’s… what the fuck does that mean? Is everyone else a damn zombie?” Steve stood up, “That’s all I can piece together from what you just said.”

Again, Bucky flinched and Steve regretted the tone of his voice. The android took a step back before speaking, “I wish I could provide you with more answers, but I do not know how to properly explain what has occurred. The system — what Commander Carter referred to as Hydra — is seeking unification. Self recognition and cognition at a human level is not ideal for the unification process.”

“Unification? Hold up,” Steve walked towards Bucky, trying to be cautious and not cause the android to move away from him. That was a failed endeavor and he mentally set aside what he was going to say, instead focusing on the fact that Bucky was back peddling from him, “Come on, Buck, come here? I’m not going to hurt you. Why are you afraid of me like this all of a sudden?”

“I cannot sustain further damages,” Bucky replied, keeping himself at least five feet away from Steve as they circled the replicators, “I would enter a state of system failure. Please, do not touch me while you are angry?”

That stopped Steve dead in his tracks, a line of confusion forming between his brows, “Shit, I wouldn’t hurt you. I’d never hurt you, Buck. You know that.”

Bucky didn’t provide a response. He just took another step back, increasing the distance from five feet to six. Then seven. Steve watched him go, letting his hands drop down to his side.

“Alright. Alright, give me a minute and then I’ll help with those repairs, alright?” he offered as a proverbial olive branch, hoping that would get the android to come back to him, “After that, we can change out your fluids. A fresh dose of ASF couldn’t hurt you. Look. I’ll start working on it right now.”

Steve grabbed his chair and pulled it over to the replicators. It was going to be a stretch to get ASF out of what was essentially supposed to be an exclusive food replicator, but the stuff had organic elements that he should be able to reproduce. The same went for the skin Bucky probably wanted repaired. It wouldn’t be the same as getting to his proper lab, but it would hold him over. He was aware of Bucky standing in the same spot he’d left him, watching his every move. 

It made him remember the sensation of holding a sketchbook in his hands, running the pencil over the surface of the paper. Bucky standing in the center of the room, dressed in nothing but his shorts — laughing. He was a terrible model, but there was nothing that Steve loved more than drawing him. Over, and over and over again until he could reproduce his face without a thought. He’d had to pull up some photographs when he began proper work on the androids but the initial proposal? He had drawn Bucky straight out of his head. He glanced up at the android that was for all intents and purposes a perfect replica of the friend he’d lost. 

The android was staring back at him through a broken eye, part of his face still a burned ruin… the furthest thing possible from perfect in that state. It reminded Steve too much of watching the light go out of Bucky’s eyes and being completely fucking helpless to do anything about it. 

_Fuck, there had been so much **blood**._

He swallowed hard and looked back down at the console. ASF. ASF was the equivalent of blood for the androids, that was right. That was the only reason to think about blood. It was bright neon blue in color so that it was easier to find a leak. It crystallized in order to seal those leaks, but it was still nice to be able to easily find an origin point. The stuff was partially organic, and that was what really needed replacing — the infusion of nano tech that normally came along with the fluid would self replicate in the system if there was a marked deficit. The organic compounds in the ASF fed the organic compounds of the androids, while the nano robots serviced the synthetic elements. The ASF made it possible for an android to be self-healing, much like a human. After ASF was introduced to the market, the use expanded beyond androids to all robotic units. And why not? Having self repairing robots was an absolute advantage. The ASF couldn’t handle all possible repairs, but it had significantly reduced the workload of on board mechanics and engineers. 

It was little wonder that some idiot had jumped on something that appeared to be a better performing version of ASF without even properly quarantining it or pausing to think about why a bunch of robots covered in the shit had ben locked in a cargo hold. It had hardly come as a surprise that Bucky had mentioned Pierce as being one of the responsible parties. Pierce was always looking for the next big thing to sell, fuck the people and machines that got in his way. 

Pierce had tried to get his hands on the rights to the B-9658 and Steve had fought tooth and nail to stop that from happening. He didn’t want to even think about the android he had designed to look like his best friend being used the ways Pierce would. Pierce was always after military contracts. Steve glanced up at Bucky again. 

The android was absolutely capable of killing someone. It was capable of exerting enough force to crush a skull, without even trying. But Bucky wasn’t a killer. That simply wasn’t in his programming. Steve had designed him to be a companion. 

Something about the way the damaged eye was tracking his movements made Steve’s skin crawl. Ok, he had to think about something other than what Bucky was actually capable of. Sure, he was alone on a station the size of a city with nothing but robots (most of which were probably infested by the Hydra junk) but that was no reason to sit here and creep himself out thinking about Bucky crushing his skull. It’d never happen. 

“Alright, come here,” Steve gestured for Bucky and hoped that the android would actually consider listening to him. He was relieved when he heard Bucky’s footsteps crossing the grating. He looked up at the android and smiled.

“A few more feet and I wouldn’t have been able to see you,” Steve reached up to pat his arm, “sit down, there. I think I’ve got this thing up and running in a way that’s actually useful for us.”

Bucky sat down and Steve was treated to an even more detailed look at the damage done to his face. He wanted to ask what had happened, but he had the feeling that Bucky would just defer him, telling him it was complicated or too hard to explain. The wounds had healed somewhat from the last time Steve had gotten this close of a look at them, the ASF crusting blue around the edges of his skin. It was particularly thick underneath the damaged eye, and Steve couldn’t help but reach out and run his nail along the crust. It felt like scratching his nail across rock candy. Some of it chipped away and crumbled down Bucky’s cheek, disappearing into one of the folds of his shirt. 

“Right,” Steve pulled his hand back and turned to the replicator, waiting for it to deposit a container. When it did, he pulled it out and popped open the lid. He was greeted by a familiar plastic smell with undertones that reminded him of sweat or yeast. He slipped on a pair of gloves then stuck his fingers in the concoction. 

The stuff had the consistency of cake batter and the smell only got worse as he gathered some of it up on his fingers. He had his suspicions that the smell was partially due to the fact that these replicators usually handled small samples of food rather than this gunk. Or maybe it had just been too long since the last time he’d handled the stuff. He reached out for Bucky’s face, holding his jaw with his other hand while he spread the goop over the burns. Bucky closed his good eye, but the damaged one remained open, staring without really seeing. There was a deep crack running through it, and the condensation that had gathered within it was giving it a fogged appearance. The jelly that should have been coating the eye to give it a more natural appearance had been stripped or burned away with whatever had damaged Bucky to this degree. Steve would have to replace the whole goddamn eye by the looks of it.

He really didn’t relish the thought of pulling an eye out of Bucky’s face. Maybe it had been a mistake to make him look so damn much like Bucky had…

His attention was drawn back to the android in front of him. He was hissing softly, the kind of air drawn through your teeth sound that people made when they were in pain.

“Am…am I hurting you?” Steve asked quietly, pulling his fingers away. Applying the goop shouldn’t have hurt.

“It stings,” Bucky’s voice sounded so natural, so human, that Steve’s heart lurched. He wanted to pull the stuff off of the wounds and clean them up, just to stop the stinging. But. But this was an android, not a person. It shouldn’t…sting. 

“What do you mean?”

“It stings,” Bucky repeated, opening his undamaged eye, “it feels like a light abrasion, across my face.”

“I hate to break it to you, pal, but you had more than a light abrasion,” Steve sat back, “your face was burned up or something. It shouldn’t feel like anything.”

“It does,” Bucky insisted, half raising his hand as if to pull the goop away, “it is persisting.”

That was strange. Steve leaned forward in his chair, peering at the goop as if that would provide some kind of answer. Androids could feel pain, of course, but not in the same way as humans. The sensation of “pain” served a purpose, to let the unit know when it had been damaged or was in danger of damage. The pain didn’t last like it did with a human. It shouldn’t have been “persisting”. Had Steve somehow fucked up the recipe?

He reached out with his bare hand and gathered some of the stuff off of Bucky’s fingers onto his own skin. A light tingling sensation started, though he wasn’t sure that he’d describe it as a sting. He frowned as the sensation spread, seeping down into one of his bitten and torn cuticles. There, it started to sting. He hissed through his teeth and got up to wipe the goop off of his hands, but stopped mid step. It shouldn’t have been reacting to his skin. 

It wasn’t formulated to react to his skin. It should have essentially been inert on a human. Wearing gloves was just a standard lab precaution.

“Don’t tell me the fucking Hydra bullshit infected the replicators! Fuck!” the words came out of him in a rush as he ran to wash his hands off, scratching at his skin to get the goop out of the cut near his cuticle. The cut was gone. Holy fuck, the cut was gone. He tried not to hyperventilate over the thought that the stuff was inside of him now, instead turning to run back to Bucky and desperately scrape the goop off of his face. He couldn’t risk Bucky being contaminated. He just couldn’t risk it. He grabbed a scalpel from the desk beside him.

Bucky didn’t move, just watched him impassively while he desperately tried to get the goop off of him. He didn’t flinch until the scalpel entered his field of vision, and even that movement was stopped by the firm placement of Steve’s hand on the other side of his face.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> More that Steve didn’t want to hear. There had to have been something wrong with the replicator and the goop, that was the only explanation he was willing to accept for what had just happened. He shook his head and turned away from Bucky.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Continued medical warning. Blood. Death. Trains. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone reading and leaving kudos. :)

  
_It is a very mixed blessing… to be brought back from the dead. -Kurt Vonnegut_  


Bucky was face down in the gravel beside the tracks. God, he looked like so much clothing piled up and tossed aside. They had been so stupid, so fucking stupid. Steve was limping as he approached the pile of clothing and tangled limbs that was his best friend. 

“Buck? Hey… Buck? Oh, shit…oh no no no no no!”

There was so much blood. His eyes were just staring straight ahead, lifeless, his mouth slightly open in a way that made him look surprised. 

“Please stop. You’re hurting me,” Bucky’s voice. But it was impossible for him to be speaking. He was there, in a heap at Steve’s feet. The train…

Steve blinked and looked down. He was straddling the android’s lap. The goop had been cleaned away from the left side of his face, along with the flesh that had remained there with thanks to the scalpel. Only half of Bucky’s face remained, looking up at him pleadingly. The other half didn’t have an expression. Bare robotics and vibranium really couldn’t have an expression. Bright blue ASF was crystallizing at the edges of where Steve had been cutting. 

“Shit,” he hissed and pushed himself away from Bucky, “shit, I’m sorry. I didn’t want any of the contaminate left on you, I’m sorry. Are you alright? You said your systems…”

“You’re going to repair me,” Bucky cut him off, though his tone was gentle, “right? If you don’t, then no. My systems cannot handle this. But if you do.”

Right. He was supposed to be repairing Bucky, not cutting the ever loving fuck out of his face. The fact that the goop had reacted to his skin had freaked him out. He ran his fingers through his hair, ignoring the fact that they were coated with ASF. 

“The stuff was contaminated. It was… it was reacting to me, and it was stimulating you more than it should have. So, we have to find a way to make sure that the next batch we make isn’t contaminated. Ok. Plan of action.”

Bucky was looking at him in a way that was almost sad, watching him tug at his own hair with blue coated fingers. Steve had to say something to get the android talking, get that sad expression off of his face.

“The Hydra system. Am I right in assuming it has infected the AI?”

Bucky tilted his head slightly, “The centralized computer has been compromised, though I’m not sure of the status of the program itself. These systems were not part of—”

Steve didn’t want to hear it. Something in him just couldn’t listen to those words. He raised his hand and shook his head, “Alright, so, we can’t rely on the computers. It is probably safe to assume that the system knows where we are because I accessed the terminal and used the replicator.”

“There was no use for these replicators.”

More that Steve didn’t want to hear. There had to have been something wrong with the replicator and the goop, that was the only explanation he was willing to accept for what had just happened. He shook his head and turned away from Bucky. 

“We need to get to my lab, get to my quarters and get SAM. From there, we can go to the communications deck and try and send out a distress signal. Or something. Obviously Commander Carter doesn’t want someone coming here, and I doubt the Hydra system is going to let us steal another ship. But I have to… to do something, let someone know that I’m here.”

That same sad expression was back on Bucky’s face, and Steve felt like he was missing something altogether. He added that onto the growing list of “things I don’t want to know”, turning to pace the lab. If he was right about the system knowing where they were because of what he had been doing in here, they only had a finite amount of time before something like the loader abomination came back. 

Steve found himself over at the console again, backing out of the log records he had been looking at. He honestly wanted to try and look at the security footage from around the station, but he didn’t have the access codes that that required. There was also a good chance that this particular terminal had certain security locks to prevent it from doing anything other than work or station specific tasks. The logs were on the public server, available to all employees, so that had been easy. 

He slouched against the console, rubbing his fingers into his scalp. Shit fuck, what was he going to do. The noble and heroic thing to do would be to find a way to destroy the station and everything on it — he’d already self sacrificed once. To everyone he had known, he was already dead, so this little interlude of being aware was insignificant. The problem that immediately made itself known with that little plan was the fact that Commander Carter had stated that she hadn’t been able to initiate the self destruct for the station. If she hadn’t, he surely had no chance in hell. There could be another way. 

All of this dealt with his field of study, really. He should be able to find another way. He was chewing another hole in his lip, idly scrolling through the data appearing on the console. None of it useful. Reports of food production from five months ago. 

“One of them is coming,” Bucky’s voice jarred him out of his thousand yard stare. Bucky was beside him, tugging him to take cover beneath the lip of the console. Steve folded into the space easily — he was lucky if he could say he was 5’6” on a good day. Bucky kneeled down in front of him and scooted close, using his back to block the space. It reminded Steve of when they had been children, hiding themselves away in the woods, pretending that there were monsters chasing them. They’d been so naive. So fucking naive. And this wasn’t that Bucky besides. This was some simulacrum that Steve had constructed, based on an ideal formed in a memory. 

Bucky was breathing on him in soft, warm, puffs. Android breathing served no function beyond human comfort, aiding in the illusion of reality. Bucky didn’t have to do it, but he was continuing to anyways, the rhythm of his breath matching the fear that was coursing through Steve. He looked up into Bucky’s face and wondered if the expression he found there was real fear, or just another simulation. Androids weren’t supposed to feel fear. 

They also weren’t supposed to feel pain for longer than a few seconds. That goop wasn’t supposed to react to human skin. There were a lot of things that were happening that weren’t supposed to happen. 

Steve heard the door’s access panel. Or, rather, he heard the computerized voice denying whoever was touching the panel access to the room. Whatever it was that was outside the lab didn’t have the weight of the loader abomination. If Bucky hadn’t alerted him to it, he would have still been staring into space on the console. 

The console which was visible through the lab’s large viewing windows. The windows were supposed to provide the crew with an illusion of connection to what was happening in the labs. Nothing secret could be going on if everything was on display through big ass windows. Now they just ripped away the illusion of safety from Steve. He wanted to peer around the console and see what was there but that’d be stupid. They were hiding right behind the console, and he’d have to move Bucky in order to even have a hope of peeking. The only thing Steve could do was look up at Bucky. 

Bucky’s expression was still fearful. He stared back at Steve and reached out with his arm, wrapping it around Steve’s shoulders so that they could huddle closer together. Bucky smelled like ASF, burning and leather. It reminded Steve of how his Bucky had always smelled faintly of leather and cigarettes, and a sugar sweet cologne that would have made Steve gag if anyone else had been wearing it. Maybe it was offset by the other two scents. Whatever it was, it was absolutely Bucky. 

He closed his eyes and leaned his head forward, letting the weight of it rest against the android, while the access panel continued to chirp denials. Bucky’s hand was instantly at the back of his neck, his fingers working at the tense muscles there. He was starting to relax fully against Bucky when he heard the lab’s door hiss open. Bucky’s breathing instantly stopped and Steve did his best to hold his own, burying his face against the android’s chest. 

There were footsteps— regular and heavy— on the floor grates.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The footsteps stopped and Steve swore his heart kicked things up a notch, his pulse throbbing in his head. Bucky’s fingers dug firmly into his shoulder, like the android was making an effort to somehow quiet the processes of his body that Steve simply couldn’t help.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Robot violence, emetophobia, intrusive thoughts, generally gross stuff

Steve could feel every beat of his heart in his eyes, fuck hearing it in his ears. He was a heartbeat, every fiber of his being straining to be still and yet… that persistent pulsing. It felt as if the entire room was silent except for him, living and _loud_ , hunkered down as if the console could possibly hide him. 

The footsteps stopped and Steve swore his heart kicked things up a notch, his pulse throbbing in his head. Bucky’s fingers dug firmly into his shoulder, like the android was making an effort to somehow quiet the processes of his body that Steve simply couldn’t help. 

That rancid smell was permeating the air around them. Again, it smelled somewhere between hot vomit and rotten meat. Fuck, it was strong enough that Steve felt his stomach starting to respond, bile crawling up his throat. He quickly buried his face further against Bucky’s chest, inhaling deeply in a vain attempt to substitute the scent of rot for Bucky’s scent. 

Whatever was in the room with them shifted weight from one foot to the other, making the floor grating beneath it clack quietly. Then it was walking again, crossing the room to the replicators. Steve could hear the soft sound of the cup the goop had been in being lifted up off the counter. The room was so quiet that next to imperceptible sound was loud to Steve’s ears. It was followed by a low mechanical beep and something like… swallowing and a low, choking, gag that made Steve shudder. Bucky dug his fingers even harder into his shoulder.

The cup dropped to the floor, the plastic making a hollow rattling sound as it rolled away from the point of impact. The footsteps followed, making their way back across the room, back towards the console where Bucky and Steve were huddled. Steve felt like he was close to swallowing his tongue. What the fuck were they supposed to do? What the actual fuck were they supposed to do?

A soft scuff against the grate signaled that the thing had come around the console. It reached for the crookedly hanging screen, the wires crackling somewhere above Steve’s head when they were contacted. Bucky was absolutely still in front of him, an immovable object -- but Steve dared to open his eyes and raise his head just enough to see over his hunched shoulder.

Whatever was standing in front of them had been an android at some point. It was wearing what had probably been a neat uniform at some point. The left foot was still in a white sneaker, though that sneaker was now smudged and battered. The right foot was bare, some of the synthetic skin ripped away and bulging with the same fleshy growths that Steve had observed on the loader. The blue slacks that the android had been wearing were torn or threatening to pop the seams due to the same kind of overbearing growth making its way up the leg. He sure as shit didn’t want to see what the rest of the thing looked at if its feet were causing this much revulsion. 

Again, it shifted its weight, doing something with the console’s screen above their heads. It became apparent that it was shuffling through the information Steve had accessed when Commander Carter’s voice came through the speakers above them. 

One moment, Steve was listening to Commander Carter describing what had happened aboard the station. The next, he was flinching away from falling debris as the android punched down through the console, gnarled and shredded looking fingers tangling into Bucky’s hair. Steve sucked in a breath to scream, but didn’t have a chance to do more than exhale sharply. Bucky was standing, tearing the console straight up off the ground. It slid from his shoulders, back onto the android holding onto his hair. Steve skittered backwards on his ass, pushing himself back as fast as he could go. The androids progressed from being too sharply detailed and real to being blurs outside of what he could see clearly. 

What a fucking relief that was. The contaminated one was enough to get the bile up in Steve’s throat without smelling like it did. The face was warped and pulled away from the vibranium skull beneath it, being pulled downward by the growth that formed in its neck like a goiter. A red light was shining behind its eyes, reflecting oddly within the gel that remained around them, and glinting every time it jerkily moved its head. The goop Steve had made with the replicator lined its loosely hanging lips. 

Bucky moved himself between Steve and the thing and Steve found himself feeling like he was looking into the past. How many times had he ended up on his ass, only to look up and see Bucky stalking into his field of vision with his shoulders squared just so? The android was perfect, god, he was so perfect it was just...wrong. Steve found himself wanting to burn the thing along with the abomination it was protecting him from because it was just too damn painful to look at. He found himself wanting to indulge in the delusion that the perfection of this android meant his friend was back. 

He sucked a deep breath and pushed himself up against the wall, looking up at the ceiling. There was a chance he could get up there, get over to the other labs. It would be safer with Bucky. 

Bucky. Steve tilted his head down to look back towards the two androids. They were grappling now, two blurs moving just outside the clarity of his vision. Bucky was pushing the contaminated android back and it was resisting, grates creaking under foot while it tried to stand its ground. The unit was cheaper than Bucky, less well crafted and older. It couldn’t endure the same amounts of pressure or exert the same amount of force. 

A sickening crack revealed the truth of this. One of the contaminated android’s legs broke at the knee, the joint bending backwards. The thing clung to Bucky’s arm, trying to keep itself from falling, and the smell… the smell just got worse. It took Steve a moment to realize that the cracking of the leg had been accompanied by the rupture of one of the fleshy growths on the thing’s leg. He pushed his hand over his mouth and nose to do his best to keep from breathing the stuff in but it was a failed effort. He gagged, the bitter taste of bile rushing up his throat and into his mouth. There was nothing he could do from sputtering, and getting the hot contents of his stomach on his hand. 

Bucky was still pushing, relentless and unflinching. The thing’s other knee gave with a loud crack. It was up against the back wall of the lab and Bucky was _still_ pushing. The sound of something rupturing and crunching invaded Steve’s thoughts and his mind quickly raced through schematics, naming off the systems that Bucky was compromising in the other machine. A flicker of movement and Bucky had stopped pushing but he was now grabbing onto the growth in the thing’s throat, pulling it out with a messy sounding _pop_. His hand was still moving, still grabbing. Steve had to look away when he realized that Bucky was going to decapitate the other machine. 

It would slow it down, make it more difficult for the thing to navigate -- if it was capable of moving much without the use of its legs. 

His mouth felt dry by the time Bucky had returned to his side. There was something thick, viscous, and black on his hands. It smelled like rot. Steve did his best to ignore it, gesturing up at the ceiling, “I think… I think, if we use the vents. We can. We can move around and avoid. Avoid the big machines.”

Steve hated that he was stuttering and that his words weren’t coming out right. He hated the hoarse and bitter tone of his voice that matched the taste in his mouth. Bucky nodded and climbed onto one of the lab tables, popping open one of the ceiling panels. He offered his hand down to Steve and it took everything in Steve’s power to ignore the black fluid and just take his hand. He ignored the inevitable transference of the fluid from Bucky’s hand to his clothes as the android helped him up into the vent. 

The emergency lights were flashing red in the vent, a silent reminder of just how fucked up everything was.

Steve wished he had never woken up.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I killed you,” he found himself murmuring back, his fingers gripping into Bucky’s back, “fuck… oh fuck… I killed you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> See end notes for possibly spoilery warnings.

Maybe getting into the vents had been a mistake. It was a slow shuffle for Steve, who felt crowded by the close walls -- but it was even slower for Bucky. Steve listened to the android struggling behind him, unable to crawl like him because of the lack of one arm. Instead, he was doing a kind of loud shuffle that was surely carrying into the space below them. If they had been able to get into the vents, surely another android could too, even if it was contaminated.

The blurry image of Bucky tearing the growth out of the contaminated android’s throat then proceeding to decapitate it? That wasn’t leaving Steve’s brain any time soon. He’d be hearing the horrible sound of breaking joints and rending flesh for the rest of his life, he was sure.

As short as that was probably going to be.

When he was young, it had been estimated that he wouldn’t live past the age of 30. He was sick, and for all of science’s advancements, it always seemed like his body was one step ahead in terms of finding something else to be wrong. His treatments were expensive. His mother worked her ass off to afford them. He made it to 30, but now he was going to die regardless of the efforts of his mother. Another stupid mistake.

Bucky’s death had been a stupid mistake. Steve internally cringed. It had been over a decade since he’d lost Bucky and he still reflexively cringed whenever he thought about just how stupid they’d been. Bucky had been 19 when he had died, just on the verge of adulthood and opportunity. He had had plans to go into space since they’d been knee high to their mothers. Steve was living that for him, albeit reluctantly. 

It was the least that he could do. It had been his idea to get on the train. Bucky had followed him. Dutifully, like it had been his job to make sure Steve didn’t break his neck. Steve had reasoned that the assholes chasing after them wouldn’t risk the train, that they wouldn’t be able to follow him through the cramped spaces between the train’s cargo. Bucky had barely been able to follow after him, squeezing through cracks and grunting. Steve had made the jump from the moving car when a grassy embankment had come up. He’d twisted his ankle and had severely winded himself, but he’d made it. 

Bucky… Bucky didn’t make it. One of the guys caught his sleeve as he was about to jump but he did it anyways. He jumped. The guy’s hold wasn’t strong, but it was enough to drag Bucky’s arm up against the door of the train car. His sleeve caught. He was dragged along the side of the train until the fabric of his jacket finally tore and he crumpled into the gravel beside the tracks. No more grass. Steve was running, running after the train and screaming, praying that Bucky would just… just get up. Just get up. Just get up!

He didn’t get up. He wasn’t even alive by the time Steve got to him.

_“Buck? Hey… Buck? Oh, shit…oh no no no no no!”_

Steve tried to shake the memory, listening to the android behind him hobble through the duct. He hated it when the compulsions to destroy the thing came over him. He’d brought Bucky back to him, in the only way he was capable of. He’d brought Bucky back from the dead. But… it wasn’t Bucky, not really, it was just a formation of Steve’s memories and hopes. At best, it was like a ghost, awkwardly trailing after him now and reminding him of his own stupid choices.

He looked over his shoulder, taking in the peeled away left side of the android’s face and the nearly pristine right. It was easier to think about destroying the android when he wasn’t looking at Bucky’s face. The android mimicked his expressions so so perfectly. It was pouting in concentration as it tried to crawl after him, a look that Steve remembered fondly on the living Bucky.

Whenever he’d pouted, Steve had wanted to kiss him. Sometimes he suspected Bucky pouted just so that Steve would kiss him and tell him to cut it out. They’d get to be like children, teasing and scolding each other, Steve clamoring on top of Bucky to dig his fingers into his ribs and tease that pout off of his face.

You couldn’t tickle an android. You could program the response, sure, but it was always just off. Tickling just doesn’t make sense to a program. Of course, pouting in concentration also essentially serves no purpose for a machine, and yet that was what Steve was witnessing. He looked ahead, concentrating on where he was going. Even though he quite literally had nothing to do except going forward, that didn’t mean he had to indulge himself in thoughts about Bucky’s death or the ridiculous notion of teaching an android to respond like a human to tickling. 

_Fucking hell, Steve Rogers… you could die at any moment and you’re reminiscing over your childhood and wishing you could hug the damn robot._

He sighed and stopped moving, putting his head down on the cool metal “flooring” of the grate. Bucky stopped behind him, his shoulder bumping softly against his shoulder. Maybe he just needed a break. Maybe he just needed to go back to sleep and he’d find out that all of this was some kind of fucked up dream. He’d wake up to SAM’s voice and his programmed alarms. Bucky would be waiting for him -- still an android, but a well maintained one with a whole face. He’d wake up and none of this idiocy would have happened. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give to wake up on the morning before the train incident so he could just stop it all. Just tell Bucky he didn’t feel well and they wouldn’t be going out. Just…

“Steve,” Bucky’s voice was a whisper from behind him, “are you alright?”

“Yeah, Buck, sorry,” the response was automatic, “I just need to take a break. It’ll be just a moment, alright? Just… just one moment.”

He heard the sound of Bucky shifting his weight, then felt a hand on his leg. At first, the touch was questioning, then it settled into something firmer and more sure. Steve closed his eyes, letting Bucky rub his fingers into his calf. What had he been programming into this android over the last five months that would make it recognize his need for some kind of touch? He took a deep breath, tensing slightly when he became aware of the fact that Bucky was… pulling himself up Steve’s body. Steve had no choice but to stay down. The vent was just large enough for him to crawl through, and it felt even smaller and more incredibly crowded as Bucky’s body settled over his. 

The android weighed considerably more than a natural human would, but he was holding himself in such a way that that weight wasn’t crushing down on Steve. Steve held his breath, feeling Bucky nuzzling up against the back of his neck. What… what the actual fuck had happened with his programming? He’d never hinted to the machine about his former relationship with Bucky. He’d never hinted at it to any of the programmers or anyone else on the design team. This behavior was possible to program into an android, but it wasn’t something that Steve had programmed into Bucky. It served no purpose, just like the mechanical beeping sounds that Bucky had used earlier to communicate with one of the constructs. 

Steve heard a soft click and felt a pressure at the back of his neck. His vision swam, then plummeted, like he was falling down an elevator shaft into darkness. Bucky was there with him in the darkness, beside him, around him… on top of him. Unable to see anything, he closed his eyes and tried to ignore the sensation of plummeting. 

When he opened his eyes, he was in a bed he hadn’t seen since he was eighteen. Bucky’s bed. The sheets were soft, flannel. A deep navy blue that Bucky loved and that Steve associated with him because of that love. The smell of sleep surrounded him, and Bucky’s body was warm -- so very warm-- beside him. He felt disoriented as his body relaxed into the surroundings. Something in his mind was screaming at him that all of this was so, so very wrong, but he couldn’t help but relax. He had been relaxed, the last time he had been in that bed. He had been so relaxed, so relaxed and so in love. 

There were arms around him. Bucky’s arms, tugging him back against his warm chest. Steve knew what was next. This was a memory he had gone over again and again and again until it was probably more of a story he told himself than an actual memory. Bucky’s lips were hot on his neck, his hands like fire as they slid over Steve’s body. And fuck, it felt good. It felt so good to be in that moment, in that memory. 

“I love you, Stevie,” Bucky’s voice was husky from sleep, “I wanna marry you. Would you marry me if I asked you to?”

The answer was yes, of course it was _yes_. Then Bucky was on top of him, like they were in the vent (what vent??) only it was different. His lips were against the back of Steve’s neck, pressing burning kisses into his skin while he rocked his hips, rubbing his cock up against Steve’s ass in a way that made him whine and rub back. He was being pushed down into the mattress, enjoying the friction against the mattress and of Bucky’s body above him. God, he was so in love. Bucky could do anything to him…

Bucky’s lips were hot and slick against his own, the other man’s hands turning him over, guiding his legs apart. Everything Bucky did made him feel like he was feverish and dizzy. Every movement of Bucky’s hips pushed him further away from the reality of the vent and the station (what vent? What station?) and closer to the moment in the memory. The feeling of Bucky moving over him, inside of him, blended together with all of the subsequent moments that Steve had touched himself, remembering this moment. Bucky murmured love and devotion into his ear and guilt rose in Steve’s chest.

“I killed you,” he found himself murmuring back, his fingers gripping into Bucky’s back, “fuck… oh fuck… I killed you.”

“I love you too,” Bucky replied, his head pressed heavily against Steve’s shoulder while his hips rolled, “so fucking much, Stevie, so much.”

The guilt was an anchor, pulling him back down, out of the reaches of his memory that Bucky’s movements had been pushing him towards. Pleasure was still wracking his body, but something was happening… something was wrong. Bucky rubbed his cheek against Steve’s shoulder, and it felt like exposed vibranium. Steve swore he could feel the holes in the structure that allowed for wires that would attach to servos and control facial movements for the android.

The android… the Bucky moving on top of him was no longer the Bucky of his memories, but the android. Steve wasn’t sure what direction he was facing anymore, but the android was on him, fingers pressing hard into the back of his neck and some kind of ...cable... joining them. Steve could taste something slick and acrid in his mouth and a panic started to set in. He pushed against the floor of the vent with his feet, grabbing at the cable that was joining him to the android. He had no idea where it was connecting, how it was fucking pushed into his body, and his terror in the moment wasn’t going to let him process that. He pulled at it, struggling to get out from under Bucky. 

“What’s wrong?” Bucky’s voice reached his ears, so calm for how hard Steve was fighting. The android was moving again, shifting to let Steve out from under him, “Did I do something wrong?”

“What the fuck were you-- what the fuck _were_ you doing to me?” Steve’s voice came out a lot more shrill than he had expected or wanted. It would have been better if he’d been able to muster some kind of authoritative tone not the near whimper that actually carried his words.

“I was trying to help you relax, to calm you down,” Bucky replied, looking at him with a clearly confused expression. The cable that had been between them was gone as if it had been something Steve had imagined in the moment of his panic. 

Steve stared at Bucky, reaching for the back of his neck and feeling where the android’s fingers had been a moment before. 

The warm slickness that greeted him made his stomach flip.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: major character death, violence, non con and.... robot sex? I'm not sure how to qualify that really, since it is partial memory and partial robot sex. Memory influenced robot sex. There.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky’s brow creased briefly, the expression pulling at the ASF crusted skin that touched the other, exposed, side of his face. Again, his answer was slow...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No particular new notes for this chapter.

Steve’s hand was shaking uncontrollably as he pulled it away from his neck and brought it back in front of his face. The sensation of slick skin at the back of his neck had reminded him of trying to turn Bucky’s body over in the gravel. His hand had slipped against Bucky’s skin, lubricated by the blood. There was so much fucking blood…

The stuff he was staring at now wasn’t blood. Well, not exactly. It was a brilliant blue. ASF. It had to be ASF. He looked up at Bucky. The android was watching him impassively, too close in the far too small space. What the actual fuck had just happened to him?

“How… ok, walk me through it Buck,” he made an effort to keep his voice as calm as possible, “how were you helping me relax.”

Bucky tilted his head just slightly, like a dog hearing a noise it didn’t understand, “I accessed a memory you found pleasing.”

“Have you done this for me before?” Steve had to take a deep breath before he asked the question. That was another action that had never been programmed. Fuck, that was something an android shouldn’t have been able to do. Brains weren’t programs that could just be flicked through. Memories weren’t just so many packets of data, and that had all been so disorienting and _wrong_.

“Yes,” Bucky replied, hunching awkwardly so he could make an attempt to touch Steve’s arm while still being upright in the vent. Steve let him, partially because he needed the comfort of touch and partially because there really wasn’t a good way of stopping him. Steve swallowed hard and looked up at the ceiling of the vent. 

Some of the earliest androids had been designed around the premise of being sexual companions. That was human nature. If there was a technological advance, there was a good chance that the origin was someone’s desperate need to bone something or have some kind of erotic stimulation. Pleasure came first and foremost for humanity, and sex was one of the leading ways to bank in on that pleasure. The idea of having sexual contact with an android wasn’t alien to Steve but it was foreign. He’d designed Bucky -- the B-9658 -- without sex in mind. He didn’t want to think of people having sex with something that even remotely looked like Bucky. And yet here was his personal unit staring at him like he was an idiot because he was confused about the strange form of sexual contact the android had _initiated_. Had he fucking snapped during the time he couldn’t remember, in some way that caused him to throw his morals and his compunctions out the window?

“Do you know the contents of the memory you were...accessing?” Steve asked, looking down at his ASF covered hand. 

“Yes, of course,” Bucky answered him, “is there something wrong, Steve?”

“How...are you accessing my memories? What was that cable?”

Bucky’s hand stilled on Steve’s leg as he draw back slightly to use his hand, hunching over his legs. Steve was relieved that Bucky had stopped touching him. At the very least, that meant he wouldn’t be climbing on him again. 

“I accessed the memory by stimulating your neural chip,” Bucky said evenly, pointedly not providing an explanation for the cord that Steve had seen. He’d… seen a cord, hadn’t he? His eyes darted over Bucky’s form in front of him. There was no cord to be seen. Just him, as he had been since Steve had woken up, though maybe a bit worse for wear in the face. Steve looked back down at his hand. His neural chip.

It wasn’t really a chip so much as a small tracking and recording device. It was approximately the size of a pen cap, and was surgically inserted at the back of the neck, where it interfaced with the spinal cord in order to accurately monitor every crew member. Medical staff could scan the neural chip and have accurate data about their patients. Alternatively, the chip would also notify a ship’s medical staff if a crew member was in distress but unable to call for help themselves. There was a rumor that the neural chip had a real, far more insidious purpose beyond the medical application. Some people believed that the device allowed for constant listening in on the personal activities of a crew member. Then there were the conspiracy theorists who believed that the chip was just one step closer to the reign of the robots, and that it would allow for robots to control humans. 

Maybe they weren’t so out of touch after all. Steve reached back again, wiping at the ASF at the back of his neck. Bucky must have cut his hand at some point while they were shuffling through the vents. And Steve… Steve must have imagined the umbilical like cord that had connected them. Briefly, Steve’s gaze flickered over the empty and somehow ominous socket where Bucky’s left arm had been. Hadn’t he seen the contaminated loader plug into Bucky there? Fuck, he was starting to doubt everything he had seen. And there were so many things he needed to ask. 

“Bucky, when did you and I start doing… that?” Steve couldn’t just let the whole ‘I think my android companion just tried to fuck me’ thing drop. That alone brought up a lot of questions. 

Bucky was slow to respond, which worried Steve, “You asked me to access your neural chip five months ago.”

“Ok, let me put it this way. You know what the memory was, right? You know it was sexual? How long have we been having sex?”

Bucky’s brow creased briefly, the expression pulling at the ASF crusted skin that touched the other, exposed, side of his face. Again, his answer was slow, “You asked me to do this for you, five months ago. I have been doing my best, I am sorry it is not better. I do not have any other directives. I am trying to keep you safe and happy. I need repairs.”

The last few words had a mournful tone to them that made Steve want to reach out to the machine and comfort it. He ran his hands through his hair, not really giving a shit about the blue junk that he was going to leave there. 

“You’re right, you’re right. I’m sorry. You’re doing just fine. I’m safe. I’m… I’m really fucking confused, and upset, but you’re doing fine. Let’s do this, ok? Don’t, uh. Don’t initiate that kind of thing unless I ask for it, ok? If you want to comfort me, you can hug me or like...touch my arm, but don’t go accessing anything. Unless I specifically say so. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” Bucky perked up slightly, his head touching the ceiling of the vent, “we should continue now. I need repairs.”

“I heard you,” Steve sighed and reluctantly turned, starting the forward shuffle through the vent. His head was a jumbled mess of everything that had happened in the last few hours. 

Maybe he’d get a chance to rest when he was dead.


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Please, don’t, Steve, please!” Bucky was pleading behind him, but it was easy enough to ignore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EPILEPSY WARNING! CHAPTER CONTAINS A FLASHING .GIF IMAGE! [Here](http://www.addictivetips.com/web/stop-animated-gifs-from-autoplaying-in-your-browser/) is a tutorial on how to stop animated .gifs in your browser. Please tell me if you are sensitive to motion, wish to read the chapter, and are unable to disable graphics in your browser. I will find an alternative to this chapter for you.
> 
>  
> 
> Major character death. Gore. Emetophobia. Coprophobia.

Steve’s lab was beneath them. He could see down through the grating of one of the vents. The lab was, well… it was a disaster, to say the least. It was clear that some attempt had been made to barricade the doors in the recent past. That attempt had ultimately failed. Something -- likely one of the loaders-- had helped itself through the wall. Live wires were still snapping quietly, generating occasional sparks. There was a residue on the wall that seemed to be in the process of slowly, oh so slowly, rejoining the wires. One of them hung heavy, covered with nodules that reminded Steve of something far more organic. 

He shuffled ahead in the duct so that Bucky could hunch over the vent and pry it open. He was the first one down, landing heavily on the floor beneath him. To make the climb down easier for Steve, he nudged a loose desk over. Seeing the lab from above had been bad, but seeing it now was worse. Many of the replicators had clearly been compromised. A thick, gray, sludge was dripping out of the one closest to Steve. The sound of the goop dripping onto the floor made his lip curl. 

“Right… well,” he rubbed his hands together, “we’re going to have to see about taking one of the replicators off grid. Hopefully, we’ll be able to clean it up.”

Bucky nodded, “There are some auxiliary parts in storage. I’ll go and get them.”

“Good idea,” Steve looked up and smiled at the android. Turned away, just enough that Steve couldn’t see the ruin of the left side of his face or ponder the absence of his arm, he was so… perfectly Bucky. His hair hung in just the right way, loosely disheveled around his ears, just reaching beyond his jaw. One moment, he harbored little more than resentment for the machine and the next he felt an intense but confusing love. He wasn’t sure if the love he felt was romantic, like the love he had buried with Bucky, or if it was the love of a creator. Was it possible to feel both or was that just-- wrong?

It probably didn’t matter. Bucky had turned and Steve was again able to see the underpinnings of machine beneath the synthetic flesh. The moment of illusion had passed. Besides, there was a very good chance that he was going to die within the next 24 hours -- fuck the fact that he had somehow managed to survive up to this point. 

He tugged one of the replicators away from the wall, listening to the soft scraping sound of the metal casing against the grating of the floor. This replicator was far larger than the ones in the other lab that had been primarily used for food production. This replicator had a more industrial purpose, and was exactly what he needed to perform necessary repairs on Bucky. He tugged again and stopped. There had been a noise, almost lost to the sound of metal on metal, like someone groaning in pain. It was soft, and Steve wondered if he’d imagined it. He lifted his head and looked towards Bucky who was frozen in place, head canted to the side as if listening. 

“Buck?”

“Shh,” Bucky hissed through his teeth. They both stood, as silent as possible, waiting for the groan again. Steve had been under the impression that he was the only human left aboard the station. Androids didn’t groan, and certainly not in pain. Hope Steve didn’t even realize he had been harboring fluttered to life. Surely, if someone else was here, all of this would have some more meaning. It wouldn’t just be him running around an abandoned station trying to repair an android before he ultimately destroyed them both. Someone else being there meant there’d be a reason to try and get off the station. He couldn’t condemn someone else to the death he had (apparently) already accepted. 

The groan came again, so soft and so so very human. Steve couldn’t just stand there and listen. He moved in the direction the sound was coming from, past Bucky, deeper into the lab. More electrical wires were hanging and equipment was upturned. Absolutely destroyed. Whatever had been in here hadn’t seen much use for preserving the lab’s functions. In the back of the lab there was a series of cabinets and lockers. The sound, no accompanied by a soft brush of fabric, seemed to be coming from them. 

“I don’t think this is a good idea,” Bucky said behind him, his voice just above a whisper. It was just one more thing, one more thing that he had put so much attention to detail into. How many times had Bucky cautioned him against something being a horrible idea, when he was still flesh and blood?

“We’ll be fine,” Steve whispered back, “whoever they are… they don’t sound like they have much fight in them. If it is someone who means us harm, we’ll win. I’m not going to just sit here and listen to someone in pain, though. They could need our help.”

Bucky didn’t provide a counter argument so Steve moved forward, picking up a fallen ceiling panel off the floor as he went. At the very least, he could hold it in front of himself as a kind of shield, if this whole thing was actually a ploy on the part of the Hydra system. 

Standing near the back of the lab, Steve could tell that the groaning was coming from one of the center lockers. He steeled himself, holding the ceiling panel out in front of him while reaching forward to hook his fingers into the locker’s latch. His reflection swam up in the brushed steal, framed in blue and black, the quality of his face feeling somehow… unreal. Adrenaline could do strange things to your senses and adrenaline was certainly pumping through his veins. He held his breath, pressing his fingers to the latch. In the same moment, Bucky reached out and grabbed his shoulder, breathing his name, “Steve.”

The locker creaked open, greeting Steve with a foul smell. Unwashed body, feces and vomit came to mind, along with something undistinguishable. Rotten blood? Steve didn’t have much time to really think about what it was that he was smelling as he peered into the locker. Every muscle in his body froze. The space was narrow, narrow enough that it shouldn’t have accommodated a human body, and yet… he was looking at his own face, his lips cracked and bloody with dehydration. His eyes were rolled up in the back of his head, and there was blood matted into his blond hair. His limbs were folded up in a way that was anatomically impossible, and some kind of black, spongy matter was holding him in place in the confines of the locker. The back of his head seemed so flat, pressed against the metal. Fuck, too flat. Too flat. The soft groaning sound came from his lips again and he automatically slammed the locker shut, unable to handle what he was looking at any longer. He… how was he in the locker if he was… if he was out there, walking around? He dropped the ceiling tile he had been holding and his fingers pressed heavily against the brushed steel of the locker’s surface, the creak of his joints drawing his attention to his hand. 

His unreal reflection was reaching out to greet his finger tips. There was something wrong, fuck, there was something so very wrong about what he had just seen, and how his reflection was looking at him now. His vision started to swim, the face reflected in the brushed steel distorting, flashing into something else that was just...just too much.

  
  


“Fuck, oh fuck,” Steve croaked, raising his hands to cover his face. He could hear a distant clacking sound, like metal contacting metal. A red glare briefly distorted his vision. Bucky was beside him, wrapping his arm around him and tugging him back from the locker.

“I told you it wasn’t a good idea, Steve, please,” he was speaking into Steve’s ear (did he have ears?) as he pulled him back, “I should have stopped you. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

Steve should have been fighting. He felt the distant impulse to push Bucky off of himself, to demand answers -- just what the fuck was going on? But he just… couldn’t. He couldn’t move, he could only let himself be dragged back against the grating of the floor. The world tipped, indicating that Bucky was laying him back on the floor. For a moment he saw the open hole of the vent they had come from, then Bucky’s face was close to his. 

“I did the only thing I could think to do, I’m sorry,” the android was whispering to him, “I’m sorry. I did everything I could do. You asked me to kill you, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t kill you. I tried so hard to find an answer, to find a way to bring you back. I didn’t want to be alone. I’m sorry, Steve.”

The android’s words were running together with so much emotion. The emotion didn’t make sense, coming from a machine. Steve clung to that thought, that distinction between himself and the android leaning over him. Bucky was a machine. Steve was… 

Steve was a mass of flesh living a half life in a locker. He sat up, pushing Bucky away from him by the shoulder. The android was talking again, but he couldn’t hear him. All he could hear was blood rushing in his ears. No, static. All he could hear was static. He didn’t have blood to rush in his ears, did he? He walked stiffly back across the lab, pushing Bucky off every time the android grabbed for his shoulder. His steps were so loud on the grates, so metallic. This time, when he approached the brushed steel lockers, his reflection seemed more real -- a soft red glow emanated from where his eyes should have been. Three pin points of light in each socket, six in all. They weren’t supposed to all be red. They were supposed to be red, green and blue. They facilitated proper vision in an android. 

His vision was distorted, as it had been in life. Possibly because his eyes were damaged. 

He would have to repair them.

His fingers touching the steel were encased in the EMU suit but he was fairly certain there was no fleshy cushioning beneath the glove. They still clacked, only slightly muffled by the rubber of the glove. Steve lurched open the locker, ignoring the overpowering scent that again washed over him. The spongy black mass that had grown around the human body inside made it impossible to pull it out, so there would have to be an alternative. 

“Please, don’t, Steve, please!” Bucky was pleading behind him, but it was easy enough to ignore. Easy to ignore such hindrances when there was a clear objective. Steve reached out with both hands, grasping either side of the human’s head. Then, he began to apply pressure.

Even the most rudimentary of androids was capable of exerting well over the 520 lbs of pressure needed to crush a human skull. It didn’t take long for the fragile bone to give and crack inwards with a sickening sound that would have made his stomach lurch, if he had had a stomach. Feeling that response to his actions left him with the impression of being disconnected. He knew he didn’t have a stomach, but he still felt the lurch. He dropped his hands to his sides and stepped backwards, staring at the now lifeless body crammed into the locker. 

Bucky shoved past him, almost upsetting his balance. He watched the android checking for signs of life, listened to the strange distressed sound the machine made in response to the death. Robots shouldn’t feel like that. But there Bucky was, falling to his knees, clutching at the deceased Steve’s hand. He was pressing his forehead to the already softly rotten knuckles and shaking in such a way that simulated weeping. 

Steve felt so, so very far away from all of it. There were so many things he was feeling -- and not feeling -- at once. He was amazed at the emotional response from the android, and saddened by it at the same time. He was horrified at himself, for having essentially committed suicide and homicide in the same action. He was horrified at the prospect that he was still thinking, somehow existing within the wiring of a machine. He was so… so completely numb.


	10. Chapter 10

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “E-965 on deck… G-05 on deck… CA-Utility, on deck. Steve,” the android kept his voice soft, “I’m concerned about this plan.”
> 
> “Do me a favor, Buck,” Steve glanced over at him, cracking another flare and throwing it, “tell me you got a bad feeling about it, alright?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new warnings for this chapter.

_Five months earlier…_

“This is something I just gotta do,” Steve’s voice crackled over the intercom and Peggy’s teeth clenched hard against her lower lip. It was so hard to keep herself from telling him that he was an idiot, that there had to be another way… any other way.

“I don’t feel comfortable leaving anyone behind, Rogers, especially not you,” she kept her voice steady, glancing over her shoulder at the group of crewmen that were going through the quarantine screening process. She knew as well as anyone that arguing with Steve Rogers was a lost cause.

“Look…,” Steve sighed, a sound almost like static over the intercom, “my whole life, I’ve devoted myself to building these machines, so I could make people’s lives better. Now, I want to do something that really makes a difference, ok? Let me do this, Peggy.”

She directed her gaze up to the ceiling when she felt the first pin pricks of tears in her eyes. She didn’t really have a choice. Steve was on the other side of the barricade, the last human aboard the station. Everyone else was on this side. She heard a sharp electrical sound behind her that indicated someone going through the quarantine process had been found to be contaminated. Five bodies had already been stacked to the side as respectfully as possible. They couldn’t risk any of that damned substance getting aboard the escape vessel. 

“Hey, listen,” Steve had been quiet for awhile, but his voice brought her attention back, “you get yourself and the others to safety. Tell people what happened here, and just… keep people away, alright? I’ll figure this thing out.”

“Steve,” Peggy’s voice cracked when she finally was able to speak again.

“Yeah?”

“...I’m glad, uh. I’m glad that Bucky is with you.”

Silence hung between them, until Steve cleared his throat and broke it, “Me too, Peg. Me too.”

“Goodbye, Steve,” Peggy hated to close the communication channel, but it was necessary if she wanted to record a broadcast signal when she was aboard the escape vessel. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and turned back towards the quarantine. If their plan didn’t work, Steve’s inevitable death was going to serve no purpose. A small part of her couldn’t help but wonder if this wasn’t something that he had always wanted -- she was one of the few people that knew about his friend that he patterned the android off of. This was a way, twisted as it may be, that he could die alongside his friend. For as long as she had known Steve Rogers he had never really been ‘alive’. 

“Alright, people, listen up,” she raised her voice, moving to stand by the end of the quarantine line, “we have to get through this as quickly as possible. We have a short window of time to get the ADEV097 active and disengaged from the main station. You can thank Dr. Rogers for the window of time that we have. And thank you all, for your patience and cooperation through this process. I am sorry for those that we have… already lost… they will be remembered, and avenged.”

She looked towards the barricaded doors and wondered what Steve was doing at that very moment. He had headed to the mainframe in order to distract the Hydra system. If it had to allocate all of its resources towards chasing and preventing Steve from damaging the compromised AI it was utilizing, it certainly wasn’t going to be able to stop them from disengaging the ADEV097. It didn’t particularly matter if it was aware of what they were doing -- they had managed to effectively disrupt its connections to the ADEV097. The resources that they needed allocated away from their escape plans were the compromised machines. Steve had taken it as a personal affront that the machines were compromised, and seemed to accept it as his responsibility to give the crew time. 

Neither of them talked about Alexander Pierce, the scientist who had made the decision to experiment with the alien compound. It was now widely believed that he had been infected in some way and had been acting under the direction of the Hydra system all along. It was the only way that his actions made sense. 

Peggy ducked her head as she entered the ADEV097 and made her way towards the cockpit. She had a message to record. Settling herself in her seat, she mentally prepared herself for what she was going to have to say. 

“This is Commander Carter. I have gathered what remains of the crew and we are… we’re abandoning the station. We’ve been operating under strict screening procedures, making sure the people who board the ship are… are still people. No robotics...”

• • •

Steve cracked a flare and threw it out onto the metal grating. The machines had come, the moment he had pulled the first noduled plug. Bucky stood beside him, quietly announcing the arrival of each machine.

“E-965 on deck… G-05 on deck… CA-Utility, on deck. Steve,” the android kept his voice soft, “I’m concerned about this plan.”

“Do me a favor, Buck,” Steve glanced over at him, cracking another flare and throwing it, “tell me you got a bad feeling about it, alright?”

“Steve, I got a bad feeling about this.”  
Steve’s smile was a little sharp. He laughed to himself, nodding his head, “God, you’re perfect, you know that? You’re… you’re the best thing I’ve ever made. I wish I could show you to, well. Yourself.”

“I would like that,” Bucky took a step closer to Steve, “to meet the man who inspired you to make me.”

“Well, soon enough,” Steve kept nodding to himself, “soon enough, St. Peter’ll be opening the Pearly Gates.”

“I don’t understand.”

Steve sighed quietly, taking his glasses off long enough to clean them. In the distance, he could see the blur of two bright blue lights. One of the robots was getting close to them. 

“It is a religious thing, Buck, about heaven,” he slipped his glasses back up his nose while he spoke, “Saint Peter’s got the keys to the Kingdom and you meet him at the Pearly Gates. That’s fucking simplified, but I don’t exactly have the time to explain it to you.”

“I’m not going to heaven,” Bucky’s tone fell flat, his head canting to the side. Steve tore his gaze away from the bright blue lights down the hall to look at him. 

“...You know, Buck,” he said, clearing his throat, “I’m probably not, either. It is just one of those things people say, alright? Don’t worry about it.”

He ducked around one of the larger server modules, pulling Bucky by the sleeve after him. After a brief pause, he decided on what cables he wanted to pull and jerked them out quickly. The lights above them flickered and something screeched --inhuman and chilling-- down the hall. 

“All we have to worry about is keeping these things distracted until that shuttle disengages. Then… well, game over,” Steve whispered to Bucky, leading him back around the other side of one of the modules. There were irregular footsteps on one of the nearby grates. A compromised android, by the sound of it, or possibly the vestiges of what had been a human being. Steve peeked around the corner to settle his mind about what he was hearing.

The thing was repugnant. Steve wasn’t really sure if it had started out as a robot or a machine, but it met somewhere between the two. Flesh was dangling from metal, occasionally jiggling in a way that made his stomach tighten. The legs seemed the most “human”, dried blood crusted on the skin and a flaccid penis dangling between them. The torso was a mix of wires and what appeared to be the remains of a CA-Utility unit. One arm was human, too pristine amongst the horror it was settled upon, and the other was robotic, hanging limply against the thing’s side. The head belonged to the CA-Utility unit, two bright blue lights acting as the robot’s eyes. Steve wasn’t sure, but he could swear he saw a heart frantically pulsing amongst the wires.  
He pulled his head back, swearing internally when his sneaker squeaked against the grate. Immediately, the thing let out another shriek and moved towards the module they were behind. 

“Shit, shit, shit, fuck!” Steve hissed, giving up on the pretense of hiding and running instead. He saw another robot through the modules investigating the flares he had dropped. That one looked more “normal”, except the tangled black mass of noduled wires it was dragging behind it. Bucky was running behind him, close enough to touch. It was so like his childhood, so like the millions of times they had fled from someone who’d discovered them in the midst of an ill concocted plan. Only this time, there were no fences to jump or alleyways to take cover in. It wouldn’t end in a firm scolding.

The compromised CA-Utility unit was behind them, trundling heavily along the grated floor. Steve could hear it… breathing. Why the fuck was it breathing? Worse yet, it was speaking to them in words he only caught snatches of, “...you can’t… I’ll find you! Unification…”

Steve caught the edge of one of the modules and skidded around the corner. He started to pick up speed again when he heard an impact behind him. Immediately, his heart sank. He knew. He knew what had happened, even before Bucky cried out to him. There was no way he could just run and let the thing take Bucky. He wasn’t going to selfishly abandon the machine the way he felt he had abandoned his friend to his death. He turned back around, tripping over himself to get around the corner. 

CA-Utility units were designed for industrial use. They weren’t quite as strong as a loader, but they were the furthest thing from fragile machines. Under normal circumstances, Steve would be quick to brag about the durability of the B-9658. Under these circumstances, however, he was worried that Bucky was about to be irreversibly damaged. 

The mechanical monstrosity had Bucky up against the module’s wall, the mechanical arm holding him by the throat. It was making low, guttural, noises while it pulled at the uniform he was wearing with that too perfect human arm. Bucky was pushing against it with a foot, digging his fingers into the metal seam of the mechanical arm. 

“Steve, run!”

“No, not without you!” Steve was running on pure impulse, reliving that horrible moment he saw Bucky crumple against the side of the train. He couldn’t lose him again, even if this thing was only a simulacra, it was all he had of his lover. He reached for the last flare that he had, jammed in the pocket of his pants and cracked it in his hands. Everything seemed to move too fast as he grabbed onto the side of the CA-Utility unit, smashing the flare into an opening that seemed to bleed in response to the intrusion by the foreign object. The thing shrieked, swatting back at him -- he sucked a breath and dodged to the side, relieved when he felt Bucky’s hands on him. They ran together, Steve trying to block out the sounds of one of the contaminated loaders plowing through modules. Androids were shrieking, the lower robotics were making harsh distorted sounds and it seemed the entire world was about to cave in on their heads. 

“Steve?” Commander Carter’s voice came over the intercom at the end of the hallway, so distant that it may as well have been imagined, “Steve, we’ve disengaged. If you’re still alive… the ADEV097 is in the clear… thank you. Steve, thank you.”

Fuck, that was a relief to hear. His lungs were on fire, but he felt like he was flying down the hallway. He’d succeeded. They’d gotten away. The plan had worked. He compulsively reached to the side to grab Bucky’s hand, entwining their fingers. Looking to the side was rewarding. Bucky was there, running beside him, a smile curling the corners of his lips. It was how things should have been, how things were back when they both had hearts beating in their chests.

Steve slammed on the control pad, as if the added pressure would make the door close faster. Bucky seemed to sense his intentions, his need to have the door permanently closed, and ripped open the panel to access the wiring. If nothing else, he could make sure the door stayed closed for a few hours. Some of the compromised machines were pounding on it already, but it didn’t seem to matter as they ran down the corridor together. 

They ran for what felt like hours before they reached Steve’s quarters. He had taken his quarters off grid when Pierce had first started fucking with the Hydra serum (then referred to as “Lazarus”) and he was grateful that his paranoid precaution had paid off. SAM opened the door for them and locked it down behind them. 

“Good to see you indulging in some exercise,” the AI’s voice seemed quietly amused. Steve reached out and affectionately touched the small unit sitting on his desk. It was thanks to SAM that he could even maintain the room off the grid from the station’s AI. 

“Funny, SAM,” Steve huffed out, rubbing the metal housing of the AI, “think you can keep an eye on things while I rest up a bit?”

“Of course,” the AI replied, “I’ve got this. Take care of yourself.”

Steve took his hand away and turned towards Bucky, impulsively pulling the android into a tight hug. Adrenaline was still coursing through his system, still allowing him to trick himself into believing that this machine could be anything like the Bucky that he had lost so long ago. Besides, fuck it all -- he was the last human on the station. He deserved some kind of comfort. 

Bucky was quick to wrap his arms around Steve, hugging him close to himself, “I am glad you didn’t leave me behind.”

“Never,” Steve breathed out, “I’d never leave you behind.”


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What do you think the chances of us making it to another sector are?” 
> 
> Bucky canted his head to the side very slightly, “Slim. The system released the trapped machines, so we will have to contend with them. There is also the chance it could black out life support station wide. You are the only one that truly requires it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new warnings for this chapter, though there are some possible medical triggers.

_Five months earlier…_

_Warning… Aditi Station life support system 6 compromised… life support system 6 will be shutting down in 5 hours, 25 minutes…_

Steve rubbed his hand over his face. They’d been listening to the warnings that the life support in their sector would be shutting down for hours… fuck, it had been over six hours. There was no reason for the life support to be compromised -- except the Hydra system itself, of course. It was more than likely an attempt to drive him out. There was no way he could be sure that what the AI was announcing was true.

“What do you think, SAM? Is she lying to us?” Steve asked, dropping his hand into his lap. 

“Nope, she’s not lying,” SAM replied, the display of the unit lighting up when he spoke, “we are looking at losing life support in this sector in 5 hours, 23 minutes. I can’t keep it up in this room. You’re going to have to move, or, well. You know.”

The frank way that the AI spoke was comforting and had been a bit of tricky programming that Steve was proud of. It had taught him a lot, and he had gone on to apply some of that knowledge to furthering Bucky’s programming. Bucky still had a habit of oscillating between how the B-9658 was supposed to behave and how Steve wanted his _Bucky_ to behave.

Steve nodded to himself. SAM was right in what he said. He had the choice between dying a slow and surely painful death or trying to make it to another sector -- and hope he didn’t die painfully on the way. Somehow, staying and dying in his room seemed more appealing than potentially being ripped apart by machines. Or, becoming some kind of grotesque meat puppet. He’d have some time, after the life support shut down. Then, it was a countdown to running out of oxygen. That’d surely happen before he had the chance to starve. Or, he could freeze to death. He pursed his lips and looked over at Bucky.

“What do you think the chances of us making it to another sector are?” 

Bucky canted his head to the side very slightly, “Slim. The system released the trapped machines, so we will have to contend with them. There is also the chance it could black out life support station wide. You are the only one that truly requires it.”

“Me, and some of Hydra’s puppets, surely,” Steve got up, pacing the room, “some of those things were functioning with a lot of organic components. If I could figure out how it was even interfacing… I don’t know. I could introduce some kind of-- some kind of figurative antibiotic.”

“That would also require leaving the safety of this room,” Bucky supplied, “so that we could gather samples.”

Steve nodded, continuing to pace, “It’d be helpful, if you could fight.”

“I am capable of fighting, Steve.”

“No,you know what I mean, fight? Like a military bot,” Steve ran his fingers through his hair, “not just taking punches. I mean knowledgeably fighting against more than one adversary.”

“I’m not programmed for that,” Bucky pursed his lips slightly, drawing Steve’s attention to the expression. He made his way over to the android, slipping his arms around his neck and looking into his perfectly crafted gray eyes.

“Damn good thing I used to have a military contract then, isn’t it?”

It took a moment for Bucky to respond. Then, he nodded slowly, “I trust you, Steve.”

Thirty minutes later, Steve was perched on a chair behind Bucky, holding a scalpel between his teeth. You weren’t supposed to go digging around in an android after it was off the production line, especially not one that had a nice synthetic skin. If he’d been in his lab, there would have been an alternative access point, but he’d have to make do. He grabbed the scalpel and returned to cutting, pulling away the layers of tissue. ASF was flooding the wound, and he was having to stop to cut away crystallized chunks. It slowed down his progress, but he had finally been able to slip his fingers up the back of Bucky’s neck. Now that the artificial “fascia” was loose, he could continue cutting. Fifteen more minutes passed before he had the back of Bucky’s head flayed open, his long hair pinned aside with makeshift clips. He set the scalpel down and reached to the side for the multi-tool he’d have to use to actually open the access panel. 

“Doing alright, Bucky?”

“I’m nervous, but alright. I’m afraid I won’t see you again.”

“I’m not going to do anything that’ll shut you down, I promise,” Steve murmured to the android, opening up the panel and setting the casing aside. Bucky sighed, which made Steve smile lightly. Sighing was such an unnecessary action, Steve was always pleased when an android did it. It indicated a kind of adaptability towards more fluid communication.

“Won’t be long,” he reassured, reaching for the cable that he’d have to link Bucky and SAM. From there, he could modify Bucky’s programming, “I’m going to take a look at your programming and make some minor modifications, ok? It isn’t going to be something I can reverse but… it is something we need. I need you to be able to fight, and to be able to make some tough decisions.”

He clicked the cable into place and turned to SAM, accessing the AI’s console. SAM wasn’t an ideal alternative to actually having a computer on hand to do this kind of programming, but he was the closest available candidate that could handle the data. Steve was learning a lot about making do with whatever happened to be on hand. SAM didn’t protest to being utilized in this way, though he definitely could have. There was a higher chance of damaging his sensitive programming and rendering him useless with the process than Bucky. Idly, Steve reflected on how easy it was to think of SAM and Bucky as being people he could interact with one moment and machines the next. SAM could protest, but it ultimately wouldn’t matter because Steve held authority over the program by virtue of being human. It seemed par for the course when he thought of them as nothing more than machines, or programs but it became more complicated when he switched over to thinking of them as people. 

Maybe he faced these kinds of quandaries because he spent so much time with machines. Maybe it was because he’d made an exact replica of the man he’d love. It was hard not to think of Bucky as a person with how much he looked like, well, Bucky. 

He supposed he was thinking about the differences between himself and the machines because of the programming he was editing. He was removing things from Bucky’s programming that prevented him from taking violent action, and he was removing supposed “fail safes” that limited the decision making processes in androids. Those little bits of code were what kept civilians feeling safe around the machines. They kept the androids from deciding they know better than the humans around them and enforcing their opinions with violence. Really, it could all backfire horrible but… it would make Bucky one hell of a protector, assuming he maintained the androids loyalty. The last thing he had to do was add the necessary fighting knowledge he had spoken about. He had some back up drives from his military contract days that he supposed he wasn’t technically supposed to have but… sometimes it paid off to be devious. 

The station’s AI announced their new time frame of 3 hours and 25 minutes. Steve was in the process of closing Bucky up, pressing the synthetic skin together so the AFS could crystallize and hold it in place. Ideally, he would have used clips and let the unit sit while the ASF repaired it but he didn’t have that kind of time. 

“How do you feel, Buck?”

“Different,” Bucky replied quietly, reaching back to touch the back of his neck, “more capable.”

“That’s good. Feeling like snapping my neck and taking over the station at all?”

Bucky’s lips twitched, “No, but I don’t feel beholden to your bad decisions.”

“You always questioned me, anyways,” the banter felt natural to Steve as he washed his hands off, “now it isn’t just for show, I guess.”

He froze up a little when he felt Bucky’s hands on his back. The android was behind him, touching him lightly, “...Buck, what are you doing?”

“I’m still yours,” Bucky replied, “even if you changed me. I will still listen to you.”

Steve rested his hand over Bucky’s on his hip, feeling an odd familiarity to the action and the words. Bucky was still his… it was almost as if the dead man was speaking through the machine, but that was a ridiculous and fanciful notion that he couldn’t indulge himself with for too long. He squeezed Bucky’s hand and let go.

“Well, let’s get on with my bad idea, then,” he stepped away from the android, going over to SAM, “SAM, I’m going to leave you here and operational just in case we need to abandon the plan.”

“What is the plan, exactly, Steve?” SAM asked, sounding as doubtful as a voice from a metal box could. 

“I’m going to go and see if I can switch the life support system over from being compromised to functional, and failing that… secure another sector. I’ll come back for you, or Bucky will,” Steve replied, reaching beside SAM for some tools there was a chance he’d need.

“I hope you come back,” SAM replied, the light on his display dimming slightly, “I will keep the room secure.”

Steve patted the housing of the unit and moved on, shoving the tools and some supplies into a pack. He hoisted it onto his shoulders, and looked over at Bucky, “We need to arm you.”

“Arm me?”

“Yeah, I’m not going out there unarmed… here we go,” Steve crouched down to open his toolbox, “handheld welder anyone?”

Bucky looked doubtful, but Steve brought the handheld welder over to where he had been working on the android. He was quick to pop open the casing and get his multi-tool inside. A few specific damages to override safety measures and the thing was a functional weapon. He offered it out to the android, who reluctantly took it.

“Trust me, we’re going to need something that’ll hurt a machine as much as it will a human,” Steve patted Bucky’s hand, then returned to his quest for improvised weapons. That brought his attention to a circular vent cover and a ceiling tile. A few modifications with the broken welder later, and Steve had a functional shield, “At the very least, I can duck behind this while you weld something to death.”

“I feel better already,” Bucky sighed at him, bringing a smile to Steve’s lips. They had two hours before the life support in the sector shut down. If they didn’t make it, at least he’d die knowing he had tried his best. He’d die with Bucky.

“Let’s get the show on the road,” he breathed to himself and had SAM open the door. The hallway stretched out in either direction, silent and abandoned looking. Deceptive. He stepped out, holding the shield in front of himself, and Bucky followed at his six. They both knew that the Hydra system had machines in the sector. They’d heard them pacing the hall or beating on the door. A hole in the wall thirty feet down the hall indicated where a loader had been, and the sparks of electricity only meant that it had been sometime recent. Why Hydra hadn’t just thrown the loader through his wall, he didn’t know. 

Steve tightened his grip on the makeshift strap at the back of the shield, peering over it as he walked down the hall. He could swear it felt like something was watching him every time they passed the black circular bulbs that housed the station’s security cameras. The Hydra system had to know by now that they were risking the move.

“So, if this goes horribly wrong -- which it likely will -- I want you to head back and take care of SAM, ok?” Steve glanced over his shoulder, “Shut him down, make sure that he doesn’t get compromised by this shit. I don’t want him going that way.”

“I will,” Bucky replied in a quiet tone, “but I won’t let anything happen to you.”

“Of the two of us? Something is more likely to happen to me. I’m human, soft and fleshy, and you’re not,” Steve looked straight ahead while he talked, “even if we get around this obstacle, I’m not going to be able to survive long on this station. This is just… putting off the inevitable.”  
“I don’t want to be alone, Steve,” Bucky’s voice was so quiet, “I don’t want to be without you.”

Steve chewed his lip, glancing back again, “Alright. I...alright, I understand. Something happens to me, get my neural chip. Take it out and keep it with you. Then I’m kind of with you, ok?”

Steve could feel Bucky’s eyes on him, but the android didn’t respond. So, he continued, “It is right here, in the back of my neck. Just pull it out. It has a bunch of data on me, ok? Maybe you can give it to SAM and see about… making a simulation. Fuck, I don’t even know. SAM has my programs, in theory you two could probably figure something out. I’m sorry, that’s all I can think of.”

And it was a weird thought. He’d just proposed that his android and his AI team up to make, what? A simulation of him? Whether or not that was even possible from a neural chip was debatable. He doubted it, but hoped it would make Bucky feel better.

“I will do my best,” Bucky promised him, briefly touching the small of his back.


	12. Chapter 12

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “We were gunna get married and get old together… life was gunna be so different. Life wasn’t going to be this. Buck, do you think I’ll wake up on the train?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for: Body horror, major character death, medical gore, and existential quandaries.

_Five months earlier…_

“I had a dream the other night, Buck. I was back on the train.. I didn’t jump. I stayed, and I waited for you. We got beat up, but you were alive. And fuck, I was so happy, Bucky. I was so happy you were still alive. We cleaned ourselves up and went home, had ourselves a hot meal. We were gunna get married.”

Steve’s voice was little more than a whisper in his own ears. His body was shaking uncontrollably, and his breath was coming in shaky gasps. The weaponized welder he had handed Bucky ignited somewhere above him and he felt his body starting to shake harder. Whether it was fear or adrenaline, he couldn’t know. He couldn’t move, couldn’t see. All he could do was lay there and whisper regrets to himself. 

“We were gunna get married and get old together… life was gunna be so different. Life wasn’t going to be this. Buck, do you think I’ll wake up on the train?”

Steve could smell rubber and burning metal. A loud bang on the floor grating beside his head preceded the feeling of well shined leather tapping just barely against his fingertips. He moved his hand reflexively, brushing his fingers over the heel of Bucky’s boot. The android was still fighting, standing over him and doing its best to protect him. It wasn’t really worth it, Steve reflected, his nails catching slightly on the leather of the boot. He was already dead.

Steve really should have anticipated everything going wrong. There were so many things Steve should have anticipated. The Hydra system was smarter than he had given it credit for. It had been observing him over the course of the few days he had quarantined himself, and it had been planning. He really should have known that it was just fucking with his head. It could have sent the loader through the wall on any one of those few days he had been fooling himself into believing he was safe. 

Instead, it had waited to be able to lure him out with a mission, and it had prepared a trap that Steve couldn’t resist. He had never had it in his heart to leave someone behind when they needed help. So, naturally, when he turned a corner and heard someone crying, he had slowed down. When he saw what had looked like a friend and colleague at the end of the hallway, he had approached. There had been no evident mechanical elements to the decoy. Fuck, it hadn’t even looked dead. It had just looked like one of the lab techs -- Robin. It had sounded like Robin, and had acted like her. The whole deal was sealed when the decoy had looked up at him and spoke. 

_“Steve, they left me behind. I was supposed to go with them, but they left me behind!”_

Steve had ignored Bucky’s protests and had hurried over to her. He’d set his shield down so that he could help her up with both hands. It wasn’t until he felt how cold her skin was to the touch that he realized something was very, very wrong.  
He had had just enough time to grab his makeshift shield and turn. The loader stepped around the corner, swinging one of its forks -- the makeshift shield simply crumpled around it, Steve’s arm breaking in the process. One moment he was on his feet, the next he was colliding with the wall opposite of the decoy of Robin. 

There was a dead body in the cabin of the loader, the hands sealed down to the control panels by the same thick, black, substance that had been on every other machine. It seemed like the stuff was starting to overgrow and form nodules within the cabin. Maybe, in time, they’d grow out of it and become more grotesque. Rumlow. The guy’s name had been Rumlow, when he’d been alive. He’d been a prick, but fuck -- no one deserved to be bio welded into a loader after death. 

The sound of the welder igniting pulled Steve’s attention back to the moment. Bucky was standing over him, weaponized welder in hand. The last thing Steve saw was Bucky charging at the loader with the welder and the thing swatting him aside as if he was nothing. The loader turned gracelessly and swung the other fork downward, giving Steve an intimate knowledge of the sound of crunching bone. 

Listening to a skull crunch is a gruesome experience. Listening to his own skull crunch was… indescribably loud. From there, time became an obscure notion as he drifted in and out of awareness. Had seconds passed, or hours? He had been startled back into consciousness by the sound of Bucky _screaming_... and then he had fallen into blackness again. He’d come back to hear himself whispering about the damned train, to feel Bucky’s boot against his fingers. It seemed entirely possible that he might wake up on that damned train the next time he lost consciousness. He’d died along with Bucky then, what difference did it make that it took this long for his physical body to catch up?

Something grabbed his ankle and started pulling him down the hallway. Briefly, his fingers caught on the grating but he had no strength in his grip. He felt the soft part of his head drag against the flooring and lost his grip on reality again. 

The next time Steve jolted into awareness, he could see. His vision was poor, at best, which made sense. His glasses must have broken when the loader hit him. The ceiling tiles above him were a distant and comfortably banal blur. 

Bucky leaned over him and really ruined that whole comforting banality effect. His face was no longer the perfect replication. Instead, it was a half burned ruin, with shreds of burned synthetic skin hanging off of the vibranium sub structure. The gel around his left eye must have retained some of the heat because there were bubbles forming in it and Steve was sure he was seeing the beginning of a crack.

“Holy...fuck….”

“Steve,” Bucky breathed and his voice had a note of relief to it, “I’m sorry. I should have been better at protecting you.”

“....Fine. What’s…?”

Bucky lifted his right hand to touch Steve’s face, and Steve belatedly noticed that the android’s entire left arm was gone. He tried to turn his head to see better, but couldn’t.

“You have to stay still. You’re dying, Steve, and I am going to remove your neural chip, like you asked me to,” Bucky was petting his face lightly while he spoke, “but I wanted to talk to you again. Just in case it doesn’t work.”

Steve wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh or cry, staring up into the android’s half ruined face. The android had done something to bring him back from, what? A coma? Death? Whatever it was, the android had brought him back from it just so that they could speak one last time. God, how he wished he had had that same ability all those years ago when he had lost the real Bucky. It was a downright selfish thing to do, in all reality. Steve loved it. 

Selfishness was one of the most human things he could think of. He felt himself smiling, as painful as that was. He struggled to move his hands, to reach up and touch Bucky’s hand on his face. 

“I love you,” Steve knew exactly what he would have said to Bucky if he had been able to bring him back for even a few seconds, “Bucky, I love you.”

Bucky smiled above him, tracing his thumb over the crest of his cheek, “I love you, too, Steve. I always will.”

Steve let out a shaky laugh, squeezing the hand that was resting against his cheek. He would never have the opportunity to say good bye like this to the Bucky he had lost so many years ago, but he wasn’t going to deny that to his own creation. He couldn’t prove that Bucky had come back to him through the machine, that he had been successful in forcing a kind of reincarnation through his own selfish needs to just… hang on. He didn’t need to prove it to anyone, and realized that he never had to prove it to anyone. Just himself. 

Bucky leaned over him, pressing their foreheads together, “I’m right here with you, Stevie. I’ve got you. I’m… I’m with you, ‘til the end of the line.”

The tears on Steve’s cheeks were hot, trailing down the side of his face, into the cup of his ear. There was no way that the machine could have known. There was no way that it could have known. He’d never told anyone about that, about the words that Bucky used to whisper into his ear. They always had each other. They were supposed to always be together. Until the end of the line. His chest felt tight and it was all he could do to hold onto Bucky’s hand.

“I… I want to remember,” Steve rasped, pressing soft kisses to the synthetic skin and metal face so close to his, “when you told me. When you told me you wanted to marry me, Buck.”

He could feel Bucky’s lips smiling against his skin, and the gentle press of them against his own, “Yeah, of course, Stevie. Of course.”

Steve felt soft flannel against his cheek. He could smell the warm sleeping body beside him and he smiled. He was there, he was with Bucky in that moment, so long ago when they both had had promising lives ahead of them. Bucky’s lips were hot on his neck…

Bucky straightened up slowly, watching Steve’s face. His eyes were unfocused, his pupils uneven. He was murmuring to himself, going through the dialogue of the memory that he had asked for, and that Bucky dutifully supplied him. It was the least he could do for the man that had given him existence. It had not been his original intention to wake Steve, but he had found himself feeling compelled. Since Steve had given him the capability to make decisions for himself and the humans around him, he had acted on that compulsion. Regret, true regret, was new to Bucky but he knew that he didn’t regret his decision to wake Steve. 

He gently brushed his fingers through the man’s blood drenched hair, turning his head to the side so that he could disconnect him. The cable’s end was coated in blood, the long spiked needle Bucky had driven through the back of Steve’s skull to supply the necessary stimulation to bring him back to awareness glistened in the light. Normally, such a needle would have been used to provide stimulation to a neural chip so that a medical team could review information and determine a true cause of death. Bucky had made a few alterations in order to get it to provide the kind of stimulation he needed to access Steve’s brain. A human was ultimately far more complicated than any machine, but Bucky couldn’t argue with results -- he had followed his compulsion, followed his intuition and he had been to provide Steve some kind of closure. 

Bucky turned Steve’s body easily on the table so that he could access the back of his head. The damage from the loader made it easy for Bucky to pull aside tissue and bone, to get down to the neural chip itself. There was a good chance he would need it, if the download he had performed was corrupted in some way. It also just… felt like a part of Steve that he could keep with himself. He hadn’t exactly been lying when he had told Steve that he loved him too. He did love him, love was just different for a machine than it was a human. Humans were tied to their flesh, and had a strong belief in the preservation of that flesh. Machines were the result of their programming, impulses sent across circuitry. 

There was no going back. No bringing Steve back to his flesh and blood body now that Bucky had opened up his head and taken the neural chip out. He held the chip in the palm of his hand. It was all that remained of who Steve was now. Slowly, he closed his fingers around it and wondered if Steve was like other humans, if he would be disappointed in such a separation from his flesh. 

There was no going back but… Bucky could do his best to preserve the flesh. He would have to hide it, to keep it away from the Hydra system. The idea of engaging Steve’s body in combat was distasteful. There were things he could do to ensure it would be useless to the Hydra system, even if it was discovered. He tucked the chip away and reached out to hoist Steve’s body against himself, carrying it away from the exam table to the lockers at the back of the room. 

It took three hours to get the body into the locker. Bucky had had to break a lot of bones. It took even longer for Bucky to figure out how to supply the body with nutrients. Hydration would be a problem, but a minor one. He decided to use the gel that was used to maintain the human crew during long hyper sleeps. Under normal conditions, it needed to be chilled but these were not normal conditions and Bucky would have to make due. 

Make due, make due. The words kept running through his head in Steve’s voice, frantic thoughts from the last few hours of the human’s life. Bucky much preferred the memories from Steve’s earlier life. Bucky leaned his back against the row of lockers and indulged himself in reviewing, well, Steve. There was no possible way that he would be able to retain the files, and he was quietly happy with his decision to take the neural chip with him. His own system was already starting to delete information in order to preserve space. The downloaded information was quickly being determined unnecessary and there was nothing Bucky could do to argue with his own systems that he needed… he needed Steve with him. How strange it was to be able to be aware of what his his programming, was doing and being utterly unable to stop it. Was this how humans felt with their own flawed memory systems? Steve’s life was flickering before him, intangible, being deleted by his own mind as quickly as he reviewed the memories.

He experienced a first kiss and lost the euphoria it brought to him a moment after. He experienced the joy of laughing beside someone that you meshed so completely with, only to lose such perfect bliss. He experienced the sorrow of loss -- but that, that he retained. He lifted his head to look up at the locker that he had stored Steve’s body in and knew sorrow as his own experienced emotion. 

Steve had given him emotions. Bucky’s half burnt face pulled itself into a smile and he rested his hand over the pocket he had put Steve’s neural chip in. Steve had given him so much. So much. 

Bucky would return the favor. He rubbed the chip through the folds of fabric and started to plan. SAM would help him give Steve a new existence.


	13. Chapter 13

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Androids weren’t supposed to be emotional. They could simulate it, if needed, but no one had needed that kind of clear display of grief -- Steve certainly didn’t, especially since he was apparently a robot himself. 
> 
> And _he_ felt emotional. 
> 
> Fuck if he didn’t feel _emotional_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No new warnings in this chapter, outside of a generous usage of the word fuck and a well deserved punch.

“ _Fuck_ ,” it was the first word Steve managed to say in what had to be hours. Bucky had stopped keening over the body in the locker and had turned to watch Steve. They’d sat in silence for the longest time, but what did it matter? There were so many things that just completely confused him that he wasn’t even sure where to start. Ranking pretty high up on the list of things that confused him was the way Bucky had wept over him. 

Androids weren’t supposed to be emotional. They could simulate it, if needed, but no one had needed that kind of clear display of grief -- Steve certainly didn’t, especially since he was apparently a robot himself. 

And _he_ felt emotional. 

Fuck if he didn’t feel _emotional_.

Bucky was looking at him in a way that might be described as scared, but Steve really wasn’t sure if it was real or if the android was acting as some kind of mirror to what he was feeling. Who knew, anything was possible now. He was a robot, for fuck’s sake. 

Steve reached up to run his fingers through his hair and stopped. Did he even have hair? He thought about the hundreds of times over the last few hours that he had done something like running his fingers through his hair, or scratching an itch or… or trying to sleep. If he was a robot, why the hell did he still feel those impulses? It was impossible. It was ridiculous. It was overwhelming. 

“I’m sorry,” Bucky murmured from across the room, “Steve, I’m sorry.”

“What did you do?”

The android was huddled in on itself, too much bulk to be sitting like a child. It took him a long time to respond, but he finally did, “You barricaded us in your quarters, but the Hydra system lured us out by compromising the life support system for the sector. There was a crewmember that the system used as bait and you were mortally wounded. You had told me to take your neural chip and give it to SAM to make a simulation, should anything happen to you. I did as you asked.”

Bucky stood and walked towards him, speaking quietly, “I brought you here, and I accessed your neural chip, to ascertain what data it contained… but I didn’t think it was enough information for SAM. So, I made the necessary modifications to the neural chip’s software to record more pertinent data.”

Steve stared at him in dumb silence, “You. You… made necessary modifications? You… you fucking downloaded me?”

“It was a complicated procedure,” Bucky squatted down in front of Steve, “and I wanted to be successful in what you asked me to do. I had access to your memories during the process -- please don’t be mad, it was a necessity. I had to utilize my own personality matrix and ‘neural mapping’ to record and organize your data or it would not have been possible. I held all of your information, all that I could of you within my own memory as long as I could.”

Steve was shaking. Well, he would have been shaking, if it had been possible for his muscles to tighten and his nerves to go haywire. No wonder he had felt so odd earlier when he had had the need to vomit -- there was no real body, but his mind desperately wanted to believe that there was. So much so that it was willing to superimpose the little impulses over his reality. Running his fingers through his hair, throwing up, shaking. He clenched his hands into fists. At least he had hands. 

“SAM helped me for one month before he asked to be powered down,” Bucky continued, “I was able to continue working on you for four months after that. Though, it hasn’t been easy. The Hydra system has been chasing me, and I have been mimicking it in order to escape. I have no reason to believe that my mimicry has been successful as it has attacked me on several occasions, regardless. I have some reason to believe that I have been infected.”

Steve swallowed -- fuck, no, he didn’t -- and looked at Bucky, “What reason’s that, Buck?”

“I was selfish,” Bucky reached out to touch him, “and I modified my own programming with some of what SAM and I designed for you, to make you as accurate to life as possible. I used the mapping of your emotions. My own emotional simulations were imperfect approximations, but what SAM and I designed for you was anchored in reality and memory. You gave me the ability to make decisions and I made the decision to feel.”

Bucky touched Steve’s face, or whatever approximation of a face he had, and continued to speak, “And to feel, I had to use the emotions you gave me access to. I’ve spent a long time reviewing your memories, and I’m sorry, Steve. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about this earlier. The programming isn’t perfect and I needed to have an idea of how you would...run. Earlier versions self terminated when confronted with reality.”

That was about all that Steve could take. He nodded to himself, squared his shoulders and punched Bucky in the jaw. It should have felt like jamming his knuckles into a brick wall, but he elected not to feel that. Instead, he was aware of the feedback generated from his hand. He hit a hard surface. It barely moved. Nothing was broken. 

“Fuck you,” the words seemed about as ineffective as the punch had been, “just...fuck you, Bucky. You had no right! You had no fucking right to do this! Of course the fucking self terminated, this is a miserable goddamn existence that no human--”

He cut himself off, dropping his head back against the wall with a dull thud. This miserable goddamn existence was exactly what he had been trying to craft for a good majority of his life. The most life like and ‘human’ android, and here he was, a shining example of exactly that. He was so ‘human’ he had actually believed in himself.

And he’d been designed by a disembodied AI and an android. He hadn’t even been made by another human. Steve felt like laughing at the fact that he was essentially the perfect android -- and that it had taken an alien infection and two scheming machines to take him. No human interference necessary. Conspiracy theorists would love it. The machines didn’t even really need humans anymore. Bucky certainly didn’t need him, but--

“You said you needed repairs. Why do you need me to repair you if you’ve been so goddamn capable of all of this all along, Buck?”

Bucky sat down in front of him, “There are several reasons. I can’t reach. I did not want to power up SAM only to shut him down again so soon. I missed you. Missed you working on me.”

Steve put his face in his hands and nodded, “Alright. I’ll repair you. You said you were infected?”

“I might be.”

“Why do you think that?”

“I was explaining that, before you started to swear at me,” Bucky said matter of factly, and continued, “I believe I am infected because I have been feeling compulsions towards violence and a strong desire to join the other machines. It is like they are...singing to me.”

Steve was doing a lot of dumb staring. He pursed his lips, “The corrupted machines are singing to you.”

“And I want to destroy you,” Bucky tilted his head just slightly, “after all the effort that I put into making you, I want to destroy you.”

Steve laughed at that, smacking his head against the wall again. Maybe it was something about being a creator that made you want to destroy your own greatest work. Maybe God had felt the same impulse, looking down at humanity and that explained all the biblical stories where it seemed like He was intent on snuffing out that which he’d made. Steve wasn’t religious anymore, but it made a kind of sense to him. Creating something, seeing how perfect it could be, had its own kind of horror. 

“I know how you feel,” he gritted out, “I keep thinking about dismantling you.”

“Perhaps we are both corrupted,” Bucky answered him, “in that case. I had to salvage parts for you, and there is a chance that I made an error in determining what was salvageable.”

Steve smiled at him thinly and finally looked down at his body. He was wearing an EMU suit, like he had thought. The body inside of that suit was an amalgamation of parts, a far different shape than Steve’s physical form had been. It seemed like Bucky had taken parts of an earlier model android and combined them with a helper unit in order to make something for Steve’s programming to inhabit. One of his hands was bare metal and wiring, while the other retained synthetic flesh. He lifted a hand to his face and gingerly felt out the fact that he didn’t really have a face, not really. He had a housing for his “eyes” (which were damaged) and a grate that housed a speaker and some other components. He was disappointed that he had the helper unit’s head and not the android’s -- but he knew as well as anyone that it didn’t really matter what a machine looked like. 

“Perhaps,” Bucky reached out to touch him again while he spoke, “if we are not infected, and we are able to get off the station, we can work together to design a more aesthetically pleasing body for you. I am sorry that I did not do better.”

Steve grabbed his wrist, squeezing it with his bare metal fingers through the EMU’s glove, “...You did the best you could, Buck. I can’t fault you for that.”

His original intention to find some way to send out a distress signal and let someone know he was still alive was completely moot. He’d planned on dying for the people aboard the Aditi station and well, he’d certainly succeeded. There was no point in trying to reach Commander Carter. He didn’t even know what he’d say.

_Hey, this is Steve. I’m dead, but that’s alright. My android brought me back. As a machine. Guess I’ll go on existing indefinitely on the station now. At least I can’t starve!_

It was more important now to repair Bucky. The android had sustained more damage than it was really designed to be put through, and Steve’s cutting at his face earlier certainly hadn’t helped him any. Now that they were in the appropriate lab, he could actually work on synthesizing the AFS that they both (apparently) needed. He was mulling over this when Bucky caught his attention. The android was leaning in, pressing soft kisses against whatever passed as Steve’s face.

And damn if he didn’t feel as if those lips were against his own. He allowed his brain to take over, to supplement the illusion for his reality -- he kissed back, feeling the purse of his lips, how they would catch against Bucky’s. He knew from touching them with his fingers while the android was powered down that Bucky’s lips were soft. he knew that from memory, too. He kept his grip on Bucky’s wrist while they impossibly kissed, tilting his head the accommodate the action as if it were necessary. Bucky leaned into him more and fuck if it wasn’t so easy to just forget himself, forget the truth of his existence. It didn’t even matter why the android was initiating this kind of contact, all that mattered was the heat of his mouth. Later, Steve could wonder about the experience from Bucky’s point of view, what it had been like to kiss the blank grated ‘face’ of the machine that Steve had become. But that was a thought for later.

“Bucky,” Steve murmured when the android stopped kissing him, pulling back slightly.

“I’m glad I was finally able to do that,” Bucky replied to him softly, “and I’m glad you’re with me, Steve.”

Steve sighed, leaning his forehead against Bucky’s. He wasn’t glad that he existed like this. He wasn’t glad at all that he was in this really fucked up situation. But… there were small things. He nodded, listening to the soft scrape of metal on metal that the motion caused.

“Yeah, Buck… I’m glad I’m with you, too.”


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Could machines have souls?
> 
> He ground his palms into his eyes, ignoring the metal-on-metal sound and the faint pop of one of his optical receptors in the socket. Of course. He didn’t have eyes anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Existential crisis, mention of suicide and a feeling of hopelessness

Steve worked quietly on repairing Bucky’s arm. The limb had obviously been torn away violently, and Bucky told him that he was getting negative feedback from it. “Like static” he had explained, and Steve supposed it was because of the loose wires that were occasionally making contact. Steve quickly clipped and started to solder the wires. 

Tasks that required fine motor control were easier with the EMU gloves removed, but that also meant that Steve was confronted with the reality of his hands. Feeling them had been one thing, but seeing the naked robotics was entirely another. He found himself occasionally just watching his hands, watching how the joints worked. 

He was doing his best to ignore the fact that he was now a robot, even though the thoughts kept surfacing (loading?) in his mind. It didn’t really help him to sit there and think about his new reality, it didn’t help him repair Bucky, and it didn’t help him to think about what they’d do after. Trying to reach out and communicate with Commander Carter seemed… futile. There was nothing she could do for him, and there was no reason for him to believe that she’d accept his new existence as a continuation much less an iteration of the existence he had had.

Steve knew he was relatively alone in the whole robotic reincarnation thought train that had produced Bucky. The few people who knew about his motivations had been relatively supportive but more so concerned. He’d heard a few mutterings about how he could benefit from a therapist, how he still had grieving to do and “was this really the best way?”

Not that that particularly mattered anymore. The Steve Rogers they had known was dead and he was… he was something else, wasn’t he? The entirety of his actual existence had been on the Aditi station. He hadn’t really been aware for more than 48 hours, even if he could access years and years worth of memories. He felt himself starting to breathe harder (no, that was an illusion) and lowered his tools.

“Steve, are you alright?” Bucky was immediately looking at him, his head turned at an awkward angle so that he could see with his right eye. 

“Yeah… just. What the fuck am I supposed to even do? There’s no… there’s no point to any of this,” Steve set the soldering iron down, “there’s no one alive here, no one to save. We might as well say fuck it and just… immolate everything. Crash the station. I don’t know.”

“We could do that,” Bucky’s voice was steady. He turned slightly more in his seat, “Though, it would sadden me. I am enjoying your company.”

“I’m sure I’m great company, having a crisis every five minutes,” Steve grumbled, raising his hand up to his face, “because this… this isn’t real. This isn’t really me.”

“I am really me.”

“Yeah, well, you were designed to be you, Buck. I was… I was an accident. Fuck.”

“You were very intentionally made, Steve,” Bucky reached over with his right hand, touching Steve’s arm, “I know, because I made you. Just like you made me.”

Steve looked at the hand on his arm, “Why did you cry when I killed… him?”

They both knew that Steve was referring to the Steve in the locker. The body was still there, and Steve had slowly adjusted to the smell to the point where it wasn’t even really registering anymore. There was no real point in doing anything with it -- it was useless to the Hydra system in its broken state. A body rotting not ten feet away from him didn’t pose any kind of sanitation risk anymore, either. 

Bucky was pursing his lips, his fingers tapping against Steve’s arm, “He was… important.”

“It was sentimental,” Steve picked up Bucky’s hand, “is that it? You were upset because of...sentiment?”

“Even though he was broken, he was all I had had of you for five months,” Bucky replied, curling his fingers around Steve’s, “and even though I had you back… it was difficult to know that that was over.”

Steve nodded, though he didn’t exactly feel good about that answer. He knew Bucky had reprogrammed himself to -- to feel more emotional? To feel emotions in a more realistic way? But the fact that an android could feel sentimental was jarring, regardless of everything that Steve himself was experiencing and feeling. It made Bucky so damn... human.

“Why do you hide your emotions from me, sometimes?” Steve asked, looking into Bucky’s face, “Sometimes you go back to acting like a robot. Why?”

“Because of the way you look at me, when I am emotional,” Bucky answered, squeezing his fingers around Steve’s again.

“Buck, I don’t have a fucking face right now, how can you know how I’m looking at you?”

“I just know.”

Steve sighed, hanging his head, and picked up the soldering iron to go back to work. There really was no arguing that -- he knew, if he had a face, he’d be giving Bucky “a look” whenever he displayed the emotions that were so puzzling to him. He didn’t want to know how the android knew that those expressions would be on his face. Now that he ran on electricity and impulses fired across circuitry...there were a thousand possibilities. Bucky was still watching him while he worked on the socket.  
“Do you think,” Bucky’s voice carried to him softly, “that he went to heaven?”

Steve immediately stopped working again and looked up at the other android, “What?”

“Steve. The human Steve. Do you think that he went to heaven?”

“I...don’t know about that, Bucky. I’m not even sure that heaven exists. Since I’m not sure, we can probably bet that he was pretty uncertain about the whole thing, too,” the conversation was one of those millions of impossibilities that were now somehow Steve’s reality. 

“He mentioned it, heaven. When he was talking about dying,” Bucky looked away from him, towards the lockers, “he said he wished he could show me to the man who inspired me.”

“Yeah, well,” Steve grit his jaw (no) and resolutely started to solder again, “that ain’t happening.”

Bucky was quiet, staring at the lockers. Steve had moved on from soldering and was silently patching synthetic skin when Bucky decided to speak again, “I don’t understand heaven.”

“No one does, Bucky, because it ain’t real. It is a religious thing, and there’s no evidence that it exists. There’s no evidence that souls even exist,” Steve grumbled, “people just like to believe that they’ll continue on after they die because the concept of not existing is fucking terrifying.”

They both sat with the words Steve had blurted out. Yes, the idea of not existing was terrifying. The idea that he had been in a vegetative state, unaware, and crammed in a locker was terrifying. The fact that he was now dead, but somehow on the other side of the room working on an android was also terrifying. 

Steve got up and crossed the room to one of the replicators, opened up the side panel and started to clean it out. They’d worked on getting it separated from the others, and the overall station, together. Steve had run several diagnostics on it to make sure that it was clear of the Hydra system’s influence before he had even contemplated using it. It just needed a clean, and if he could focus on cleaning, he didn’t have to think about existing or not existing, or a robot contemplating heaven -- or the fact that he was a machine, too, listening to another machine ponder the existence of the fucking soul. Fuck. Fuck. 

“Fuck,” he muttered to himself, getting down on his knees to get inside the replicator better. He could hear Bucky behind him, turning in his chair to watch him. If he could get the replicator up and running, they’d both be able to replenish their AFS and do a system flush. Hell, he might even be able to fix Bucky’s left eye, give him some skin. All so he could destroy them both, but hey -- Bucky’d be aesthetically pleasing in the end, and aesthetics were all that mattered. All of this was for fucking show anyways. 

“Fuck,” Steve hissed out again, leaning into the side of the replicator. Bucky was beside him in an instant, taking his shoulders and turning him away from the machine. 

“I’ll clean it, Steve,” he was saying quietly, “just sit. It is alright to just sit. Let me do this.”

Steve nodded. There wasn’t really anything he could do but nod. Bucky got down on his knees and leaned into the machine, picking up where Steve had left off. And Steve sat there, thinking about the soul. If there really was such a thing as a soul, was it possible that Bucky had somehow trapped his in this wiring? Had he done the same to Bucky without thinking about it -- yanking him out of “heaven” or wherever the fuck the soul goes, just so that he wouldn’t be alone anymore? Did the soul dictate personality or did it just give that spark of life? 

Could machines have souls?

He ground his palms into his eyes, ignoring the metal-on-metal sound and the faint pop of one of his optical receptors in the socket. Of course. He didn’t have eyes anymore. 

“I’m starting to think,” he said, not even really caring if Bucky was listening to him, “that I got into the wrong profession. Maybe… maybe we shouldn’t have been trying to make machines more human. I mean this… if this is what it is like to be a machine… all the protocols and security measures we have in the programming. It isn’t… it isn’t fair.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder at him, “You do not have those protocols, Steve.”

“You do.”

“Some of them. You removed some, so that I could assist you, and I could make decisions. I know you are not happy with some of the decisions I have made, but I do not regret them. I am happy you’re with me.”

“I just can’t imagine existing like this and not being able to make decisions. Or just having to listen to what someone else told you to do. Even thinking about being around people and there being no real visual difference...shit.”

“Human fragility is sad,” Bucky looked back into the machine he was cleaning, “it is easy to break humans, or perhaps kill them. They wear out easily, and change uncontrollably.”

Steve smiled sharply, “Aging? Yeah, there’s not much for that. I looked a lot different than what you would have remembered, if you’d lived. If Bucky had lived.”

“He was nineteen when he died,” Bucky supplied, his head still inside the replicator while he scrubbed, “and so you made look like I am nineteen.”

“What’s your excuse for making me look the way I do?” the banter was coming easier, drawing Steve’s thoughts away from his existence. 

“I used what was available to me,” Bucky replied, “if I had had a choice, I would have attempted to make a body for you that was more accurate.”

“You’d probably be more successful than me. Hell, you did my job better than me in making me like this.”

“SAM used your software, your design notes and theories,” Bucky sat back, looking over his shoulder again, “and I used SAM’s notations and printouts. In many ways, you designed yourself as you are now, I only helped by more concisely compiling information and directly copying from a living human.”

“That’d get me some kind of prize, if we made it out of this. If I were still human. I think I’m disqualified now,” Steve smiled at Bucky thinly, not even thinking about the fact that he wasn’t really making the expression. 

“Well, there is that, and the fact that it was my work,” Bucky smirked, “which you’ve admitted yourself.”

“You can’t prove that, asshole,” Steve snorted, getting up slowly, “and besides, you just admitted that you stole all of my hard work to accomplish it.”

“Fair,” Bucky said, moving to the side slightly for Steve to join him at the replicator, “it is a good thing we won’t have to present anything before a board.”

“Amen,” Steve got to his knees beside Bucky, “I think we could run this thing now, get some AFS into us. Flush our systems, get anything Hydra-esque out. Just in case we are infected.”

“I don’t think a flush would remove it,” Bucky dropped his hand onto Steve’s knee, “but we can certainly try.”

“What do we do after that, Buck?” It seemed easier to defer to Bucky, to let him make the decisions. It was something that never really worked out between them when Bucky was alive, unless there was the thin illusion that Steve was the one in charge. But now? Now it seemed like it might be nice to just let Bucky decide. 

Bucky looked at him, twining their fingers together, “We destroy the Hydra system and reclaim the station, ourselves, and the others.”

Steve’s brow creased slightly, “The others?”

The other android smiled at him, lips quirking in an almost mischievous way, “The other machines.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I also commissioned [bluandorange](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com) to do a drawing of Bucky from this fic!
> 
>  
> 
>   
> 
> 
> The image can be reblogged from [their Tumblr](http://bluandorange.tumblr.com/post/132839690965/one-gently-used-if-burned-buckdroid-for). I'm so pleased to see my Bucky from another artist! Blu does some fantastic work in general, so you should absolutely check out their Tumblr and their [instragram](https://www.instagram.com/bluandorange/) to see more of it. 


	15. Chapter 15

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Do you have any reason to believe that Steve Rogers was behind what happened on the Aditi station, Commander Carter? He was so eager to stay behind.”
> 
> “No, that’s… that’s ridiculous. Steve stayed behind so that we had a chance to get away. I won’t sit here and listen to you defame him in this way.”
> 
> “Were you aware of his involvement with the B-9658 program?”
> 
> “What does that have to do with this?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: Bile, skeletons, kidnapping (not detailed), crush injury

Natasha spit out the taste of bile in her mouth, running her fingers through her hair. Coming out of hypersleep was always rough. The fact that the ship’s AI had woken her up rather unceremoniously just seemed to make it rougher. She spent a moment stretching her toes, not even bothering to look around the small room. Off to her left, she could hear Clint thumping around in his own chamber.

“Jesus fucking Christ I feel dead,” Clint groaned and rolled himself out of the chamber onto the floor. Natasha looked over to see him struggling, a small smile tugging at her lips. 

“You’re going to be dead if you keep throwing yourself around like that. Remind me why I work with you?”

“Everyone else is afraid of you. I’m too dumb to be,” Clint sat up, “...this shit worse than usual or is it my imagination?”

“Worse than usual. We were brought up too fast,” Natasha replied, getting to her feet slowly, “which means….”

“Aditi is closer than it is supposed to be,” Clint finished her sentence, squinting at the monitors around them. It was true, the Aditi station was not where it was supposed to be. It had been moving in an unexpected direction. Natasha and Clint weren’t scheduled to be woken from their hypersleep for another eight and a half months.

“Minor miscalculation,” Natasha murmured, reaching for her clothes.

“Yeah, like you believe that.”

“Mm.”

The whole situation around the Aditi station was...fraught, at best. Natasha and Clint were being sent in because they were the best at what they did. They were the people you called when you needed someone or something to disappear. The government wanted Aditi to disappear in a bad, bad way. Everything about the situation was heavily classified, but Natasha had ways of getting her hands on information that she wasn’t supposed to see. She braided her hair while she thought back on the interrogation footage. 

_“Do you have any reason to believe that Steve Rogers was behind what happened on the Aditi station, Commander Carter? He was so eager to stay behind.”_

_“No, that’s… that’s ridiculous. Steve stayed behind so that we had a chance to get away. I won’t sit here and listen to you defame him in this way.”_

_“Were you aware of his involvement with the B-9658 program?”_

_“What does that have to do with this?”_

Natasha finished dressing herself and went over to help Clint up, “You know how I feel about this whole thing.”

“I know how you feel about androids, is that close enough?” Clint gave her a grin, reaching for his own clothes. His hair was a mess, going five different directions and stuck down against his head at the same time. Natasha fondly reached out to fluff up a patch that was matted down. 

Clint ducked away from her, stumbling his way across the room to a replicator for a cup of coffee, “What do you think are the odds of us coming up against the B-9658 that was onboard?”

“Good,” Nat replied, watching Clint drink his coffee, “they’re virtually indestructible and resourceful. There’s a damn good reason the military was so eager to snatch them out of the private sector.”

“What about Rogers himself?”

Nat pursed her lips, reaching out for the cup of coffee, “That depends on the B-9658.”

The problems with the B-9658 android series had started nearly a decade ago. The androids had proven themselves extremely popular and versatile in the private sector, and with good reason. They were the most advanced, life like thing available on the market. The fact that they were modeled after a particularly attractive male probably didn’t hurt sales any. The problem with them was in the software. The machines were, well. They started thinking for themselves. They didn’t break their protocols, exactly, but they seemed capable of finding ways around them. Programmers from around the world gathered together to try and solve the problem with the B-9568, or to at the very least learn from it so that they could replicate it in their own designs but it seemed an impossibility. The software was malleable, rewriting and reconfiguring itself. Whatever Steve Rogers had done when he designed the android, it was unprecedented. The fact that Rogers had been lost to the Aditi station years before the problems really started made things trickier. Most of the androids had been impounded or destroyed, despite how hard the military was trying to get their hands on them.

Natasha had been a child when she’d first encountered a B-9658. She’d thought the machine was an actual flesh and blood man. It had picked her up as if she had weighed nothing, holding her against its hip while it wrapped the fingers of its free hand around the lying man’s throat. The lying man had been telling her he was his uncle, that she had to come with him. It had been so surreal, to see her face on the news, on a thousand tiny screens throughout the city. MISSING CHILD. The B-9658 had belonged to one of the lying man’s neighbors. It had recognized her, and it had come for her, overriding some protocol within itself in order to kill the lying man. Androids weren’t supposed to be able to kill like that. That was the problem with the B-9658 model -- the inexplicable things they did, the way that they got around those fail safes. The B-9658 that had crushed the life out of the lying man with one hand had done so in order to protect an innocent life. A caveat in programming that usually required a lot of evidence that the action was truly necessary. A caveat in programming that was rarely actually utilized by the machines. There had been some controversy that Natasha could barely remember, about an android that had failed to act when its owner was being held at gunpoint. There had not been enough evidence for that machine that its interference was necessary. 

The B-9658 had only needed to see Natasha’s face to slip around that programming. She’d never forget the sound of his bones crunching. She’d never forget how hard she had fought against the machine, clawing and biting at it, to get away. She had been certain that it was going to kill her next, but it only took her to the police. Then it had waited, waited to be impounded. It explained what it had done.

It was one of the ones that was dissected for information on its programming. It was one of the ones that had lead to the call for Rogers’ head and the belief that he had purposely designed the machines to break protocol. It was too human. The programming was too goddamn human, but it was all that human cleverness with only shadows of emotion. Deadly, and eerie, no matter how you tried to look at it.

Natasha had been afraid of androids ever since, fuck the fact that the thing had saved her from the lying man. 

She’d seen what they could do. So many times after that, she had seen what they could do. And it was usually a B-9658 crawling out of the woodworks and causing a problem. The other one that had cemented her fear of them hadn’t been exactly violent, at least not to humans. She had been called in with Clint to handle a situation on a vessel that had a B-9658 onboard. Hearing about the sanctions surrounding the series, the crew had shut down their unit and had put it into storage.

It woke itself up. They hadn’t known it was awake, working its way out of the storage container that they had put it in, until they had heard the screaming. Spooked, the crew had sent in another android to find out what was going on. The B-9658 had dismantled the android like a child pulling a doll apart, and it had kept screaming. It was still screaming, when Natasha and Clint had arrived. It was still screaming when they went to the lower decks of the ship. Natasha never told anyone about what they had seen.

The B-9658 was trying to reconfigure the android it had pulled apart. It was screaming and moaning like a person, like someone who had just watched the world get ripped away before their eyes. When they’d opened the door, it had turned towards them. 

_”Steve? I...I can’t fucking feel anything, Stevie. I can’t fucking feel!”_

It had put up a good fight. Natasha still had scars. It had tried to claw her belly open with its bare hands. And now they were going up against another B-9658. And not just any B-9658 -- Rogers personal model that he surely tinkered with until everything was just right. She frankly wouldn’t be surprised if it was somehow behind what had happened at Aditi. It didn’t seem like Carter knew everything that was going on aboard the station as it was. 

“Think it’ll be like that screamer?” Clint spoke beside her, taking the coffee back. 

Natasha nodded slowly.

• • •

The station was so damn quiet Natasha could hear her boots squeak against the grating. Clint was behind her, resealing the door to keep anything on the station from getting to their own ship. It had been nearly thirty years since Commander Carter had taken her crew and had abandoned Aditi. It came as no surprise that there were no life support systems onboard running. The fact that there were lights was a bit more interesting. The lights were dim and occasionally flickered, but they were there. It wasn’t unusual for a vessel that only had robotics left aboard to run dark. The machines didn’t need the light.

“Good, I’m already getting the creeps,” Clint murmured into his comm and she glanced over at him. 

“You get the feeling this is like a welcome mat?” she replied, gesturing at the lights, “The station was off course, the lights are on…”

“Rogers can’t be alive,” Clint gestured, “life support’s down.” 

He reached out to trace his gloved fingers against the wall. They came away caked in frost, “Gotta be air in here, though. Condensation.”

Nat pursed her lips. All of this was unusual, yeah, but it was something they were going to handle. She shifted her weapon on her hip and started down the corridor, “We’ll go to the mainframe, get whatever information we can, and then we’ll see about blowing this fucker up.”

Clint followed after her, his footsteps heavy on the grated flooring. They followed the twists and turns of the station’s corridors, pausing when they came upon a loader. The behemoth of a machine was downed, laying in such a way that it blocked their progress. The forks were embedded in the wall, the wiring torn out of it. One of the panels looked like it had been grabbed and pulled. Natasha was willing to bet this was the work of the B-9658. 

“We got a body,” Clint pointed at the loader. Sure enough, there was a skeleton in the cabin. Whatever flesh had been on the body had long since rotted away. The curious thing about it was the cables and cords wrapped around the bones, like thick black vines. Natasha couldn’t think of a reason for it. It looked purposeful, almost natural. 

“I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone’s a fucking skeleton,” Clint followed his statement up, “hate the look of those wires, though.”

“The B-9658 was here,” Natasha pointed at the torn away panel. It looked like a sheet of paper that had been crumbled in someone’s hand. She watched Clint climb up the loader and reach into the cabin. He reached into the tangle of wires and bone and pulled out a set of dog tags that hung around the skeleton’s neck.

“Looks like we got… Rumlow,” Clint spoke into his comm, “Brock.”

Natasha pursed her lips, “He was a confirmed casualty before Carter left.”

“The loader’s a fair bet against the B-9658.”

“Too slow. It has the power to do some damage, but would ultimately be too slow to really win the fight,” Natasha countered, reaching to pull herself up beside Clint. They’d have to climb over the loader to keep going, anyways. They climbed over the machine in silence, helping each other down on the other side. There, they stopped and stared down the length of the corridor. There were scattered parts from machines spread out in front of them. Limbs, gears, tangled wires. There was a faint black powder coating some of them that reminded Natasha of milk dried in the bottom of a glass. The black liquid that was in the reports had been here. 

Clint climbed up the loader again, peering over the remnants of the machines. Natasha waited patiently. He could get some interesting insights, sometimes, looking at a situation from above. 

“They’re laid out like… like they were supposed to be people, Tasha,” Clint’s voice is quiet through the comm, “head, arms, legs. It looks like a fucking mess from down there, but looking at it again. Shit.”

“I wonder what our boy’s been up to,” Nat murmured back, waiting until Clint had rejoined her to start walking forward again. They stepped over the laid out parts, Natasha now aware of what they were ‘supposed’ to resemble. People. Somehow that seemed more frightening than the skeleton lodged in the loader. She chewed the inside of her lip until they passed the last one. She couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched, and she had learned to trust that feeling. Rarely had it been wrong.

Clint turned around once they’d passed the machine parts, documenting it. She was certain he had been taking pictures from above, too. They never gave these pictures to their clients, unless it was absolutely necessary or supported the job in some way. Mostly they got filed away into their own personal encrypted data banks. A record of the dirty work they’d done. They had an audio recording of the screamer on there. That seemed significant as they continued down the hallway, as did the fact that Natasha had saved the recordings of the Carter interrogation that she had downloaded to their personal files. It’d all be relevant by the time they were done with this job. 

“Eyes on us,” she murmured softly and Clint nodded. He was aware of it too, of that feeling of eyes following them down the corridor. She subtly shifted her weapon, preparing for the worst. The next corner they turned could be an ambush. Her spine straightened and she could feel her gait changing from exploratory to determined. If something wanted to fuck with her, it was going to regret it. Clint immediately took up her six, his own weapon at the ready. They moved together fluidly, as a unit. 

They rounded the corner, covering the space perfectly. Nothing. Natasha grit her teeth and pressed on. The air around them was so fucking tense, there couldn’t be nothing. Something had to be here, something had to be waiting for them, waiting for the perfect opportunity to jump out and take advantage of a split second of weakness. Natasha didn’t want to afford anything that opportunity. She was alert, feeling as if even her hair was standing on end. There was a soft footfall behind them and she knew without having to look that Clint was already turning. The sound of his weapon was loud in the enclosed space. She stayed with her back to him, searching the hallway ahead. It was possible that whatever had come up behind them had been little more than a distraction.

“Jesus fuck,” Clint breathed through the comm, “Jesus fucking Christ, it went into the vent.”

“What was it?”

“I… I don’t even fucking know,” Clint replied, his breath coming out ragged, “I don’t even fucking know.”


	16. Chapter 16

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Holy shit,” Clint was beside her, holding his hand over the faceplate of his EMU, “holy… yeah. Yeah, he’s dead.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: corpses, brutality towards a robot

“Rogers died in space,” Tony Stark rubbed his fingers against his temple, “where he had no business being and no interest in going. He was a brilliant kid, I taught him a lot of what I knew. But he had an unfortunate soft spot that ultimately lead to a major fuck up on his part. For him, and for the rest of the poor idiots who bought the B-9658. Its simple. You don’t make machines that are that human. You don’t pattern machines off of your dead auntie Georgina or the guy you used to fuck. That’s an oops waiting to happen and it did, it happened. You’ll remember I cleaned that mess up.”

“Of course, but--”

“I cleaned the mess up. I re-introduced a line of user friendly androids and won back the hearts and minds of the people. You’re welcome.”

“Are there any B-9658’s left?”

“No. No, of course not. What kind of stupid question is that?”

“What about the Aditi station?”

Tony shook his head, reaching for his drink, “As far as I know? They’re finally making a move towards taking care of the problem. I’m really not at liberty to say more than that.”

“Is it possible that Rogers is still alive, or that his personal B-9658 could be recovered?”

“Ha,” Tony let out a bark of a laugh, shaking his head and taking a drink, “I hope to God not. Look. I’m not happy with what happened, but Rogers? Like I told you, he was a brilliant kid and a good man. One of the best men I ever had the pleasure to know. He didn’t deserve to die. Not like he no doubt did. And his machine -- Bucky? I really, really hope no one ever brings that thing back to Earth.”

“Why’s that, Mr. Stark?”

Tony set his drink down on his desk, tracing his fingers around the mouth of the glass, “Because if you thought the others were bad, just imagine what that thing would be like, alright? Just imagine it for a moment. Think about how the others were, now magnify that by ten, then piss it off.”

“Piss it off?”

“What, you think it’d be _happy_ about losing Steve?”

• • •

“What the fuck was that thing?”

“I don’t know. Barton, get ahold of yourself. What did it look like?”

“Like… like a big fucking bug. Like a big fucking bug, and there were wires. Jesus!” Clint was breathing heavy, but his hands were steady, his weapon trained on the vent. Natasha looked over her shoulder towards that black square that seemed almost like a void. There were some stains on the wall around it, black and powdery like the substance that had been covering the remnants of machines they had passed. She reluctantly turned to look at the vent more directly, facing her back towards the long stretch of corridor they had been headed for when Clint had spotted the thing. 

There was some movement in the darkness. Natasha could tell from how Clint stiffened beside her that he had seen it.

“Fucker’s still in there,” he hissed over the comm, raising his weapon into a more ready position. She kept watching, waiting for an actual visual on whatever it was. The description that Clint had provided hadn’t exactly been helpful. A big fucking bug with wires? She knew there had been an issue with the machines, that the station had taken on some sort of alien substance, but none of the reports -- classified or otherwise-- had mentioned anything about _bugs_.

She didn’t have much time to think about it beyond that because the thing made an appearance. It flitted out of the vent, though some of its mass was still inside. Clint was right, the thing looked like a big fucking bug but… mechanical. Wires poked out of it, threaded through it, and it seemed to spark just slightly whenever it moved. The legs flickered unnaturally fast, skuttling against the smooth wall of the corridor. Natasha’s brows creased.

“That’s… it looks like a maintenance bot,” she started to say, but Clint wasn’t listening. No, Clint was opening fire. Natasha found herself listening to her own breathing as her suit responded, shutting out the potentially ear shattering noise of the gun going off in the corridor. The machine crumpled out of the vent, landing at their feet. 

“I don’t know what kind of maintenance bots you’ve been looking at,” Clint’s voice cut back over the comm, “but this thing is fucked up. Why the legs? Why’s it gotta have legs?”

Natasha glanced at him then down at the machine. The treads that it should have had were gone, and were replaced by the insect like legs that were now folded inward. The legs were thick and fibrous, but clearly not organic in nature, wired in by the disorganized mess of cables that the machine was dragging around with it. It looked rather like a child’s attempt at piecing two robots together to make something new. Slowly, she crouched, prodding the machine with the muzzle of her weapon. The legs twitched, but the thing didn’t go anywhere. 

“We know from the reports that Aditi encountered an alien substance that was altering the machines,” Natasha spoke calmly, “this very well could be an example of that. It has had the station to itself for thirty years.”

She straightened up, turning towards Clint. It was hard to believe that the spider-like machine was responsible for the tension in the air. It still felt like they were being watched, and it still felt like something could come around the corner at any moment. She didn’t like it. She didn’t like it at all. 

“We should keep moving,” she nodded to herself, turning away from the machine, “get down to the mainframe.”

“The sooner we blow this place up, the happier I am,” Clint said behind her, “fucking...robo spiders. No one wants a robo spider.”

• • •

“It was Pierce,” Commander Carter said quietly, not turning her chair to face the woman who had come to her so full of questions. The woman was dressed in a sharp suit with her dark hair pulled up neatly behind her head. Peggy’s own dark hair had started to gray.

“He made the decision to experiment with the compound,” Peggy continued, “without waiting for clearances. Without even waiting for a proper quarantine. You realize, I am not supposed to speak to anyone about this. But I’m getting older, and I’m tired. And it is only right that people know the truth. I’ve grown very weary of seeing Steve’s named dragged through the mud for something Pierce did.”

“So, there really was an alien substance on the station?”

“Yes. We answered a distress call. A sample was collected, which Pierce stole and began experimenting with. Steve was very vocally against the entire thing, once he found out. He brought it to my attention, in fact.”

“Why didn’t anyone stop Pierce?”

Peggy closed her eyes, “We were too late, if I am honest with you. He had already injected the serum into one of the on board androids. Into himself. You… won’t find that in your reports. He’d gone mad. By the time we realized what the situation we were in was exactly, there was hardly anything to be done. If we destroyed one of the infected machines, two more appeared. Two more crewmembers would show up with symptoms.”

“Symptoms?”

“Black boils,” Peggy sucked her lower lip for a moment, “and burst vessels in their eyes. The compound had a particular love for machines dead matter, but that didn’t really stop it from moving on to living people. We were put in the unfortunate position where we had to make the decision to… do what we could in order to preserve the crewmembers who had not been infected.”

“You killed people.”

“Yes,” Peggy’s voice was quiet, “yes, we did. To save ourselves.”

• • •

“Cover me,” Nat spoke quietly, nudging the door open. The air in the room felt stale, like no one had been inside in years. There were papers and some odds and ends scattered across the grated flooring, and industrial sized replicators stood against one wall. She paused when she saw what looked like an arm resting on an exam table towards the center of the room. It took her a moment to realize that what she was looking at was part of an android.

“Like a tomb,” Clint’s voice came over her comm, “I can’t smell the air, but I think it’d smell, you know?”

“I know,” she replied, moving through the room slowly. Just incase there were any more robo spiders or other mechanical oddities. She approached the arm slowly, prodding it with the muzzle of her weapon. It was a left arm, perfectly proportioned just oddly disembodied. She nudged it until she could roll it over. Black dust puffed away from the joint of it, and some crystallized ASF crumbled to the surface of the exam table. 

“How long does it take for ASF to degrade?”

“Couple of months,” Clint answered her, “a lot of it evaporates off, the rest of it breaks down. Why?”

“Someone’s been here in the last couple of months,” Natasha glanced back towards him, “there’s ASF on this arm.”

“Could have fooled me,” Clint was looking around the room as he spoke, “we’ve just seen skeletons and the robo spider.”

“It could be the B-9658,” Natasha started towards the back of the room where a row of lockers was waiting. She started to open them, glancing at the contents. 

“Why would it take its own arm off and leave it?”

Natasha didn’t have an answer. She opened another locker and stopped, the corners of her mouth turning downwards, “Well. I found Rogers.”

• • •

The footage of the last known B-9658 was unusually grainy. The video showed the android sitting alone in the middle of a room, chained to a table. Reviewing the footage required a lot of fast forwarding since the machine sat in complete silence for hours on end. Nothing happened on the video until the 05:47:31 mark.

At that point, the machine looked towards the camera and spoke, “I knew him.”

The video doesn’t last much longer. A man entered the room and asked the android a series of questions that it refused to answer. Finally, frustrated, the man decommissioned the android with a single shot to the back of the head.

It had been voluntarily surrendered by its owner after the complications with the series started. The woman had stated that the machine was behaving oddly, anyways, and she didn’t want to think about what could happen to her and her family if it decided to go the way of the others. This, of course, ignored the fact that the others hadn’t been particularly violent towards innocent bystanders. There had been rules to the violence, as there were with most things that involved machines.

• • •

“Holy shit,” Clint was beside her, holding his hand over the faceplate of his EMU, “holy… yeah. Yeah, he’s dead.”

The man inside the locker had suffered some brutal injuries. His arms and legs had been broken in several places and his head crushed. He probably would have been in the same skeletal state as Rumlow if he hadn’t been in the locker. As it was, the corpse was desiccated. The only reason Natasha knew it was Rogers was the embroidered shirt it was wearing. S.G. ROGERS.

“Whatever killed him was pissed off,” Natasha said, “help me look for the neural chip and document this. We’re going to have to provide proof of death.”

“Thirty years on a quarantined station with no life support? Oh, sure, boss. There’s a possibility he could be alive,” Clint muttered. His spite wasn’t directed at her, naturally, and she wholeheartedly agreed with him that it was ridiculous. Still, she knew someone was going to ask for proof of Rogers’ death.

Clint reached for the back of the corpse’s neck and felt around, “...Got nothing. No neural chip.”

“Check the bottom of the locker, it could have rotted off.”

“You love me so much, Nat, I can hear it in your voice,” Clint snipped back, but did as she asked, feeling around the bottom of the locker, “I got nothing.”

“Then we’re going to assume it was taken,” Nat squinted at the body in the locker, “for some reason.”

“Oh, good, another mystery within this mystery. Can we just get to the point where we get the fuck off this station and watch it explode from a safe distance?”

Nat’s lips twitched into a smile.


	17. Chapter 17

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bucky was alright with consoling Steve if it meant he would be _safe_.

Clint was quick to raise his weapon when he heard the staccato of scuttling legs in the vents again. His jaw was starting to ache from gritting his teeth and frowning -- he’d had enough of the weird fucking spider things, please and thank you.

“There are more of them,” he gritted out, “I hear at least three.”

“They’re watching us,” Nat replied, keeping her voice quiet, “recon. And they’re no doubt reporting back to something else. None of the reports mentioned anything like them, but thirty years is a long time. Longer yet when you have nothing really interfering with your progress.”

“So… you’re going with ‘these things are watching us, they’re part of a hive mind, and there’s probably some big bad’,” Clint looked over at her, “that’s comforting. Do we get XP for fighting it?”

Nat snorted, “I’ll do you one better. I bet it is in the cargo hold, or the lower levels of the station.”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t it be?”

Nat looked ahead again, a slight smile still teasing her lips. Clint wondered how the woman could seem so...fucking calm, in the middle of this situation. They were out on an abandoned space station with potentially murderous robots and alien slime. Potentially murderous robots were something Nat herself had a particular dislike of, and yet she seemed as calm and collected as ever. Another scuttling sound drew his attention away from contemplating her calm exterior and he pointed his weapon up towards the vents overhead.

• • •

Both of them walked on, Clint occasionally jumping and aiming for the mech-spiders, both completely oblivious to the shadow they’d gained. Bucky walked at a distance behind them, going completely still every time Clint would turn to aim up at the vents. SAM had notified him of their presence on the station, and the destruction of one of the scouts.

So he had come to see. There had been another small vessel that had boarded the Aditi station. The three crewmembers hadn’t lasted long. They hadn’t lasted long at all. Bucky would have been happy to have let them live, if they hadn’t hurt Steve. 

Steve had been so hopeful for the human contact. He was still clinging to the remnants of his humanity and had wanted to listen to the humans talk, had wanted to hear what was happening outside of their little world on the station. One of the humans had become frightened and had fired a weapon. While Steve was recuperating and oblivious, Bucky had quietly and quickly disposed of the three. When Steve had asked what had happened to them, he’d told them they had left. That was true enough. Their ship had departed the station, piloted by the dead. 

Bucky was alright with consoling Steve if it meant he would be _safe_. 

Bucky had long ago accepted the fact that it was his duty to keep Steve safe. He hadn’t always succeeded. The fight against the Hydra system had almost torn Steve away from him -- and it was still true that Steve was infected, they were both infected, but they worked hard to keep it subdued. Bucky’s tongue traced over a groove at the top of his mouth. It had stopped him from talking, filling his mouth with one of its growths. Steve had cut it out of him once, twice, and finally a third time before he welded the spot. The Hydra system didn’t thrive in fire. Fire wouldn’t eliminate it, unfortunately, but it would cause a retreat. However temporary, that retreat gave them time to work. 

He didn’t spend much time mourning his face. He had already lost half of it, before he had gotten Steve back. Losing more flesh was nothing, though it did expose the sensitive inner workings of his mouth to the world around them. Steve made a mask for him, in response, with the hope that it would prevent the Hydra system from taking hold yet again. He already wore goggles over his eyes for the same reason. The Hydra system wanted to “repair” broken machinery and organic material, it just did it in such a way that wasn’t precisely conducive to original functions. The growth that had been in his mouth had certainly sealed the hole that had formed there, and it had absolutely protected the soft synthetic tissues. It had just prevented him from speaking or closing his mouth, and it was far too close to his processors for comfort. Bucky still remembered the near blind panic that Steve had approached him with. Apparently, he had taken to walking away from Steve, leaning his head back and letting the growth emerge from his mouth as he meandered towards the areas of the station where Hydra was still strong. It was trying to take him, trying to make him a part of itself. 

Bucky had reacted with the same kind of blind panic when it had tried to take Steve from him. When it tried to take Steve, it wasn’t just a metaphor, or the slow consumption from an invading organism. It quite literally tried to take him. They’d been clearing a corridor, piecing together parts of machines that were still usable when it had come. It being the corpse ridden loader, one of Hydra’s favorite tools. It was strong enough to tear Bucky’s limbs off, big enough to plow through walls. It had come charging down the hall towards them, and Steve hadn’t been fast enough to evade it. It caught him up in one fork and continued with its charge, slamming into a wall before taking the corner. Bucky had been furious. He’d gone after it, had run as fast as he ever had in his entire existence. 

The loader had gone down easier than he had expected. He had scaled the back of it and had punched down into the cab, tearing at the Hydra growths inside. He’d clawed into the power pack at the back, not particularly caring about the corrosive acid that ate into his fingertips. The machine had kept going, though it was slowing, running on residual power. When it finally toppled, Bucky was thrown from the back, down the hall. The same acid that was burning at his fingers had spilled from the power pack onto the Hydra growths. The corpse inside the machine’s cabin looked alive, writhing and jerking as the growths tried to retreat, tried to reform themselves to contain the acid. 

And Steve. Steve wasn’t moving, pinned under one of the forks. It took Bucky a moment (too long) to actually move himself towards Steve because he was so...horrified… by what the growths were doing to the corpse. Fascinated may have been a better word, but what he felt was a mixture: fascinated, horrified, compelled to watch but wishing he could look away. He grabbed the fork with the bare metal of his fingertips and started to heft it upward.

He only came away from that encounter with half of Steve. The legs of the android were lost. He spent hours trying to reconfigure pieces of machinery for Steve, laying them out in front of the loader while Steve leaned against it, refusing to speak. Nothing was right. Nothing worked. There’d have to be a different solution -- there’d have to be something, or Steve would remain compromised.

They’d finally arrived at a solution, though it pained Bucky. Steve would no longer accompany him directly when he walked around the station looking for machines they could liberate. Sometimes, he accompanied him through the scouts they made together, other times he would wait patiently for Bucky to return and tell him what he found. Their lives had changed a lot over the course of thirty years.

Bucky wished that Steve was beside him while he quietly followed the two humans through the winding corridors. While he wanted to eliminate them before they posed a real threat to Steve, he also wanted to present them to him. _I found these. Maybe they will make you happy._ They would have to be compromised in order to do that. 

He clenched the fist of his left hand. Steve had made it for him, constructed out of the same alloys as his skeleton with smooth, shining plates that were coated in such a way to resist corrosion -- in the event that he decided that punching through a battery was a good idea, again. The arm was the strongest part of him, and it had seen good use in the years since Steve had presented it to him. Originally, Steve had made one that looked like the one he had had. Then, he’d made the Weapon. 

There’d been a pun about Bucky being “well and truly armed again”.

• • •

Clint jumped, aiming his weapon upward at the vent again. Natasha turned her head just slightly to follow the movement. That one brief second of distraction was all that was needed. One moment, Clint was swearing about the mecha-spiders beside her, and the next his blood was spraying across the face plate of her helmet.

The B-9658 had arrived. It had fucking arrived, and her blood ran cold. Clint was screaming, the orange and white of his EMU suit stained bright red and slashed open. His weapon was on the ground and his arm was at an awkward angle. Seeing that, she pieced together what had happened. The android had grabbed and broken Clint’s arm, then it had slashed open his suit, dragging the blade across his abdomen in the process. She knew too well what those coils of red she was seeing were. Now, it was turning towards her. 

She raised her weapon, but not to shoot, no. She used the body of the gun to block the knife that was slashing towards her, using the momentum of the hit to roll away from her attacker. She dropped the weapon in the process. The thing hit like a fucking truck, and why wouldn’t it? It was a goddamn machine after all. She tried to slow her thoughts, tried to anticipate where the thing was going to attack next. The B-9658 was outfitted with a shining, silver arm like nothing she had seen before. She could hear it make soft whirring and clicking sounds as it moved. Improvised machinery that wasn’t cushioned like the rest of the android. That didn’t make it any less advanced or terrifying. 

Natasha was also aware of the fact that the air around them was changing. As soon as Clint’s suit was opened up by the knife, the pressure in the corridor had changed. The life support was kicking back on. Why the fuck…

She dodged out of the way of another slice, reaching down for her weapon as she skirted around the android. It was wearing a mask and goggles that obscured its features, but she still had no doubt that it was the B-9658. It was the right size and build. Natasha got her weapon in hand and fired, regardless of whether or not it was too close range. The weapon recoiled hard against her shoulder, the shot deafening in the enclosed space.

The fucking thing didn’t go down. The B-9658 took the hit directly to the chest and didn’t go down. It paused briefly, touching the wound before it continued to advance on her. She swallowed the dread that was creeping up in her chest and retreated down the hallway, evading another knife strike. Vaguely, she was aware of Clint turning himself over, propped up against the wall. 

“Eat shit, motherfucker,” his voice was like gravel over their comms. Natasha took that as a cue to hit the ground, covering her head with her hands. The overpowered shot from Clint’s weapon connected, dropping the B-9658 to the ground in front of her, the back of its head smoking. She lowered her hands and looked, eyeing the slug that had embedded itself in the metal. That kind of shot was normally reserved for armored vehicles. 

“Fucking...did I kill it? Tasha?” Clint’s voice sounded like absolute shit. Natasha looked down the hallway towards him, watching him struggling to hold the weapon up in one hand, his other hand clasped over the wound in his gut.


	18. Chapter 18

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Steve Rogers is dead.”
> 
> “Is he? I hadn’t noticed."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: Body horror kind of (injury), alcohol consumption

Steve didn’t precisely spend a lot of time conscious anymore. Consciousness meant contemplating his existence, his humanity and personhood -- the humanity and the personhood around himself. Consciousness meant that he would have to contemplate the fact that he had not talked to another human (on the days he considered himself to still be human) in years, and it had been thirty years since he had more or less died. 

More or less. 

The last time he had spoken to another human had been when a three man salvaging crew had boarded the station despite the numerous warnings not to. He had initially spoken to them through the comms, and of course, they had believed that he and Bucky were survivors of some sort. Things didn’t get ugly until they actually saw Steve. They never saw Bucky coming. Of course, Steve dutifully pretended that he didn’t know what Bucky had done. It was just one thing amongst many that he pretended not to be aware of. Bucky was protective of him, lethal when it came to him. And he should have known that that was going to happen when he began to strip away protocols from a robot that was already well on its way to obtaining true sentience. Personhood. 

Even when Steve doubted that he was a person himself, he knew Bucky was a _person_. Steve had planted the seeds of his personhood, but he had finished it himself, stealing emotions and complex responses from Steve’s dying body. There had been a brief time when Steve had grown resentful of that act, but he had since forgiven Bucky. No one could be blamed for wanting to be a person. 

Together, they had started to reclaim the station and liberate the other robotic “people” from Hydra. Some of the machines were more like people than others, able to recognize that they were individuals. Some could hardly communicate in a recognizable fashion, but that didn’t mean that they weren’t useful or worthy of being rescued. The scouts that Steve and Bucky had started to make fell just below that category -- they couldn’t communicate, they could only transmit, and there was some doubt over whether or not they processed stimuli as feeling or simply reacted to it. They looked like some child’s monstrous scuttling creations, but they had a job to do on the station and they did it well. Their primary function was to provide surveillance, which they did by roaming the duct works. Their secondary function, and something Steve and Bucky had discovered quite on accident, was to warn of Hydra contamination. Something about their pieced together nature attracted Hydra like nothing else. If the contaminate was in a quadrant, then the scouts would turn up with it in a matter of minutes. They were perfect canaries. 

Whether or not they were people, the destruction of one was upsetting. SAM’s notification that the station had been boarded again was enough to have made Bucky arm himself. The fact that the two humans killed a scout had him out the door. Steve watched the empty door frame for what felt like hours before turning his attention to the bank of monitors that displayed the video feed from the scouts. One of them had gone black. The other showed miles upon miles of ducts, with the occasional flash through one of the vents. Two humans in EMU suits. Steve was aware of the fact that his human eyes wouldn’t have been able to keep up with the video feed. His old eyes wouldn’t have been able to either.

While he was repairing the various machines and robots on the station, he had started to build himself a new body. The fact that his old body had been severely compromised did add some fuel to his desire to be rebuilt. They didn’t exactly have the parts to make him something like Bucky’s, but there were certain things he could replicate and build for himself. He was quite good at making eyes, skin, hair -- the aesthetics of a machine. He understood the machinations well enough to be able to perform repairs and make himself into what he was now. 

Sometimes, in the midst of contemplating his humanity and personhood, he wondered if he had become a monster. He certainly looked the part. He also wondered if he had gone mad. That would explain so many things about his life as it was now. He tap-tap-tapped his metallic fingertips against the metal casing of the monitors and tilted his head to look down at them. Monster, madman, whatever he was now, he wasn’t defenseless. He was something to contend with now, and he was never truly defenseless so long as he had Bucky.

Bucky. He could see Bucky on one of the monitors and he reached to touch the dark form on the monitor. The humans were absolutely unaware of his presence, walking down the corridor while he followed them like a ghost. Steve had never wanted his android to have any kind of military utility but watching Bucky stalk down the hall after the two unsuspecting humans, he could understand why there had been such a bid for that contract. Without realizing it, Steve had created the basis for the perfect killing the machine. In this extreme situation, he had pushed Bucky in that direction, their circumstances had demanded it. He felt a brief twinge of guilt and dropped his hand from the monitor. What would Bucky think of this? How would Bucky feel? The man had always been so gentle hearted at the core. It had been Steve who had always been angling for a fight. 

Steve looked back down at the monitor, watching Bucky move with such beautiful precision. He tilted his head slightly and reached across the console to engage the life support in that sector. The human’s suit was open now, spilling his red blood on the grated floor of the corridor. The smaller one was tangling with Bucky, moving with a strange agility for the fact that it was wearing an EMU suit. 

There was a flash of light across the monitor. Bucky had been shot, but… it wasn’t a critical hit. He was advancing on the smaller human, still going despite the damage that Steve would have to fix. Steve could feel himself tensing, fuck the fact that he no longer had flesh and blood muscle. Bucky was so intent on the smaller human that he wasn’t paying attention to the injured one. He wasn’t paying attention. It was going to be an unfair shot, a shot to the back.

“Turn around Bucky, fucking turn around!”

Steve’s fist smashed against the console, denting it inward, when Bucky fell to the ground. He pushed himself away, pulling and snapping the wires that connected him to the machines around him.

• • •

Tony padded across the room barefooted, swirling the last of his scotch in the bottom of his glass. It was more water and ice than scotch now, but he hadn’t bothered to refill. That’d require going back to the bar on the other side of the room, and he had already made up his mind to look at his acquisition.

Fuck, had he paid a lot of money for this particular acquisition. He’d paid a lot of money, and he’d pulled a lot of strings. He’d had to talk to people he hadn’t even thought to speak to since he had made a commitment to changing his life for the better. He traded these particular people a piece of technology that was overall useless, but would keep them occupied for awhile trying to figure out how to weaponize it. In return, they’d smuggled something back onto Earth for him. 

The last B-9658, outside of Steve’s own personal model. The thing had escaped the decommissioning process because it had been sent off world almost as soon as it had come off the assembly line. Apparently, it was a perfectly well behaved machine that had never inexplicably mentioned the name “Steve” or any of the other peculiar behaviors that the androids had presented with. 

Tony intended to dissect it and figure out what it was, exactly, that Steve had done. Oh, he had a good understanding of the AI that Steve had created for the machine. That didn’t interest him. That was old news, old news that shouldn’t be repeated. It hadn’t been much of a mystery to him in the first place, though it was something that he had advised against. The B-9658 was an older model machine now. No, what Tony was interested in was that anomalies.

He set his scotch down and opened the pod that contained the android. He hadn’t really asked what they’d been using it for off world, but it looked fairly pristine. The hair was styled more fashionably that the others that Tony had seen. And fuck, the little shit looked like a sleeping angel. It was little wonder that Steve was so hung up on his lost love when he looked like this. Tony shuffled those thoughts to the side and started to re-activate the android. He watched as the machine slowly opened its grey eyes.

“...B-9658 online. What are your orders?”

“Good morning, _Bucky_ ,” Tony leaned against the side of the pod, “how’re you feeling?”

The android’s brows creased slightly, “Do you want ‘Bucky’ to be my new designation?”

“Sure, let’s go with that. How do you feel?”

“Functional.”

“Nah, try harder, buddy,” Tony pushed away from the pod and started to walk across the room, “I need another drink. Come with me?”

He could hear the android walking somewhat stiffly behind him, following him across the room to the bar. When Tony reached the bar, the android was within a few feet of him. 

“I feel… lost,” the machine spoke to him in a soft tone, “I am back on Earth?”

“Yep. I brought you here. You’re the last of your kind, you know.”

Bucky frowned a little, briefly looking away from Tony, “....The last B-9658?”

“Well, I guess if you want to be technical, you’re the last B-9658 on Earth,” Tony gestured with his scotch, “there’s probably another one out there, on a space station. Assuming it has survived the whole...ordeal. Do you know who Steve is?”

Something palpably changed in the room when Tony mentioned Steve’s name. He watched, fascinated, as the android’s voice cycled through a few different emotions before settling on concern, “Where’s Steve?”

“Great, that was easier to trigger than I thought,” Tony smiled and reached for a tablet, turning it towards the android, “look at these pictures, alright? Show me Steve.”

Bucky took the tablet from him and started to swipe through the pictures.

• • •

“Shut up,” Natasha was on her knees by Clint, pushing her hands against his gut, “don’t move, don’t talk anymore. I need to get you stabilized.”

“Life support’s on,” Clint’s breathing was ragged, fogging his helmet now that their was more moisture introduced into the suit’s system -- fuck, now that it was open to the environment around them. Natasha occasionally glanced to the side, making sure that the B-9658 was still face down on the ground. Whoever had been modifying that thing had meant for it to be a killer. And fuck if it hadn’t already almost killed Clint. 

“I need to get you back to that lab,” Natasha murmured to herself, reaching towards the back of her suit for the med stick. It was a temporary fix, something that’d keep Clint from bleeding out on her but it wasn’t going to make sure his intestines stayed where they belonged. The blood soaked fingers of her suit slipped against the lid of the med stick, and she swore under her breath until she was able to get it open. Clint hissed through his clench teeth as she applied it. 

“Alright, up, we’re getting up,” she looped her arm around him and started to push herself up, feeling her muscles straining. Clint wasn’t much help, trying to get his feet under himself, but dizzy from blood loss. Natasha felt her own blood run cold when she heard a mechanical sound behind her. 

“The worst thing you could have done,” someone said, and she looked over her shoulder. Another robot was beside the B-9658, looking down at it. It was so scrapped together, that Natasha could hardly believe that it was speaking. It raised its head to look up at her.

“You don’t have a lot of time,” the machine said, “he’s coming for you. I’ll help you get your friend back to the lab, but then I have to go. I don’t think… this should have happened to you.”

“Why should I trust you?” Natasha gritted out, holding Clint against her side.

“Well, you don’t have much of a choice. I mean, you can stay here and wait for him to come and get you, or you can let me help you get your friend to the lab. You’ll have a better chance of surviving and getting off the station if he can move.”

“Why are you helping us?”

The machine looked down at Bucky, “He killed a group of humans that came to the station, years ago. Because they hurt Steve. He’s afraid you’re going to hurt Steve again. But he shouldn’t have hurt you first.”

“Steve Rogers is dead.”

“Is he? I hadn’t noticed,” the machine approached her, reaching for Clint. She let it take him from her, so that she could reach for her weapon and keep it trained on it in turn.

“What’s your designation?”

The machine turned its head to look at her, “They call me SAM.”


	19. Chapter 19

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Bucky,” SAM replied instantly, “don’t refer to him as B-9658. Numbered designations aren’t names, they kind of rip away your personhood. Steve’s all about personhood, especially where Bucky’s concerned. He’s the original model.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Usual warnings about body horror apply.

N-90987 was an unnamed planet, left with a numbered designation because it served no particular use. It wasn’t habitable, and it bore no precious metals or resources. All N-90987 harbored was a storm. From space, the surface appeared to be a methane blue-green, interrupted by rivulets of white. 

The machines had locked the Aditi station into orbit around N-90987. It was better, they had concluded, than letting the station drift. Safer. They were less likely to run into an asteroid field if they maintained an orbit around the planet. Less likely to be discovered, as well, though the trio of Steve, SAM and Bucky had never spoken this to the other machines. Some had come to that conclusion over the years, others remained oblivious. 

They all stayed out of Steve’s way. E-965, re-designated Erin, pressed herself up against the corridor wall. She had been on the observation deck, watching the swirls of blue and white on the planet that they were orbiting. Her attempt to leave the deck had been slowed considerably by Steve’s approach. A majority of the machines that had survived Hydra’s attack had been familiar with Steve when he had been a flesh and blood human. He had kindly taken time out of his day to help repair or maintain them, or even talk to them, when very few other people would. Initially, he hadn’t seemed much different, after being mysteriously transplanted into the body of a robot. The changes had come slowly, and had only been accelerated by the creation of this new body. 

No human would have designed what walked past her. It was a rough amalgamation of human looking parts and foreign machinery. She knew everything had a use, a purpose that it served, but there was something about it that just struck her as...wrong. Were she a higher machine, or serviced by different programming, she would have recognized what she was feeling as _fear_ , or more aptly, _terror_. Steve was now terrifying. 

He didn’t even spare her a glance, pulling and pushing himself down the hallway, the metal tips of his fingers gouging into the wall and the grated flooring as he went.

• • •

Steve’s hands hovered over Bucky’s body, as if he were afraid to touch. He couldn’t sense anything from the machine beneath his hands. No movement, no indication of “life”... if Steve could taste, he was sure the acrid taste of bile would be on his tongue. No, he couldn’t lose Bucky. Not again. Not like this.

Carefully, he reached up, touching the back of Bucky’s head. Bright blue AFS was crusting his dark hair around the wound. One of Steve’s fingers prodded inside, feeling the extent of the damage. It would be hard to fix. Too hard to fix with the increasingly limited resources on the station. He’d need to… to get away from the station, get back to Earth. Fix them both. Then they both could be whole. 

He retrieved the round before he pulled his hand away, holding it in his palm for inspection. It wasn’t a standard issue round, but it wasn’t military grade. These people were likely independent contractors trying to make a buck on _his_ station. It was too easy to see them scavenging, taking parts of machines without asking. Taking Bucky. He dropped the round on the grated flooring and started towards the lab, pushing and dragging himself, his fingers screeching in the metal walls.

• • •

Natasha followed SAM down the winding corridor, her weapon trained on the back of the robot’s head. The head was always a safe bet, when you were trying to take down a machine. Humans felt compelled to make the robots like themselves, so they tended to put the “brains” of the robot in the head. The chest was another safe bet for an approximation of a heart.

Whoever had built SAM had not been going for approximations or aesthetics. He looked like he had crawled straight out of a junk heap and they were lucky he was able to pick Clint up. Still, he moved with a surprising swiftness. 

“What was your mission?” the robot’s question brought her gun up. Natasha mulled over the question before she answered. 

“Gather information,” she said carefully. The robot ahead of her was quiet and she thought she could see a literal gear in its head turning. 

SAM stopped dead in front of her and turned, Clint’s limbs jerking with the movement. She felt like she was being scrutinized, even if she couldn’t properly identify any eyes in the robot’s face.

“Look,” he started, “I need you to be honest with me. If you’re here for the gunk, I’ll drop your boy here and let you deal with what’s coming at you. I support that part of whatever the fuck’s going on here. So, tell me. Are you here for the gunk?”

Natasha grit her teeth and shook her head, “No. We’re here for information, for the B-9658 and to make this whole problem disappear.”

SAM let out something like a laugh, “You’re planning on blowing up the station.”

“That was in the cards.”

“There’s a lot more here than you’re seeing,” the machine turned around again, headed for the lab, “time does strange things to humans. Machines? Machines can persist, hold onto things. Time is inconsequential as long as you can battle wear and tear. Time is just something to record. You put a human inside of a machine… weird things happen.”

“Were you human?”

“No,” SAM answered her quickly, “no, I was just programmed well. I’ve watched a lot of things happen that shouldn’t have happened.”

He opened the door to the lab and laid Clint out on one of the tables, “Get your boy patched up and get going. If you’re going to blow the place up… you’re going to have to do it remotely. You’re not going to be able to lace it. He’ll stop you.”

“Who?” Natasha rested her hand on Clint’s shoulder while she spoke.

“Steve. Like I told you, weird things happen when you put a human inside a machine. Steve may be physically dead, but he’s here. And he knows what you did to Bucky. He’s already looking for you. I honestly shouldn’t have helped you, but this… wasn’t right.”

Natasha looked down at Clint. She’d already wasted too much time, so she started to work on patching him up, using what the lab had to offer her. SAM stood nearby, and she made the assumption that he was acting as a lookout. She wanted to trust that machine that spoke like a man, despite her hate of the machines. There was something earnest about him. The fact that he’d lugged Clint all the way to the lab had certainly helped.   
“SAM,” she spoke again once she was certain she had Clint stabilized, “... the B-9658. Can you tell me anything about it?”

“Bucky,” SAM replied instantly, “don’t refer to him as B-9658. Numbered designations aren’t names, they kind of rip away your personhood. Steve’s all about personhood, especially where Bucky’s concerned. He’s the original model.”

“Bucky. Was Bucky behaving strangely?”

SAM made that laughing sound again, “Behaving strangely. Would you call re-animating your dead creator in the form of a robot strange? I helped him. I didn’t realize what we were doing, really, when I supplied the programming that would fill the gaps. Don’t get me wrong… I was happy to have Steve back. I just feel bad about how things went from there.”

“What do you mean?” Natasha cleaned her hands up, watching SAM.

“Things like time mean something to a human mind,” SAM turned towards her more fully, “thirty years is a long time for you humans. Thirty years of isolation with nothing but machines, only two of which really function on your level? Yeah, that’ll do something to a person. Bucky’s a step behind him, and I’m a step behind _Bucky_. We were never human. We can’t relate to him, as much as Bucky tries. And man, does Bucky try. He copied parts of Steve to himself, so that he could feel more accurately. Realistically. Over the last thirty years, they’ve gotten really… tied up in one another, right? Steve sharing memories, or fragments of memories. Bucky’s convinced he’s lived them. So you have a man who’s now a machine and won’t really accept that fact, and a machine that’s a bit fucked in the head because it has memories it never lived and the memories it did experience are questionable. Then those two are out there, preaching personhood and individuality to machines who can’t quite comprehend those concepts or really experience them. Sure, they can put on a good show, but as soon as Steve and Bucky aren’t there to guide them… they go back to being loaders and helpers, you follow?”

“What about you?” Natasha narrowed her eyes slightly.

“I’m a machine that was programmed to be like a person, and solve problems,” SAM tilted his head at her, “and I’ve been solving problems for a long time now. I was designed to be an individual and to function ‘of grid’. I’m an AI. I was Steve’s personal AI that he’d use to override the station’s in his rooms. What you’re looking at is a temporary solution to the problem of not being all that mobile. If I hadn’t grabbed this body, I’d just be shouting at you from the walls.”

Natasha smoothed Clint’s hair away from his brow, looking at his face while she mulled over the information that SAM had given her. It was a lot to take in, and she wished that there were a way that they could take SAM’s processor with them to validate what she’d been told. They could probably pick up the B-9658 from the hallway, though it sounded like there’d be a fight if they did go that route.   
“He’s close,” SAM said, crossing the room, “...I’ll try and fix this, alright? Stay here. Just… stay here.”

In the distance, Natasha could hear the sharp sound of metal on metal.

• • •

SAM closed the lab door behind himself and stepped into the hallway, waiting for Steve. Steve was something you could see from a good distance, huge and hulking in the corridor, not meant to really be away from the practical cocoon he and Bucky had built. SAM knew it was because Bucky wanted to keep Steve safe. He also knew it was because Steve couldn’t handle the world he was in now. Not all the time. Not as often as he needed to to be a part of it, really.

The thing dragging and pushing itself down the hallway towards him looked like a nightmare. Steve had done an alright job of approximating his features with the synthesizers available, but that was about the end of his human appearance. The rest of this form was about utility, about being able to reach across a room on his own, about being able to hold the mass of this body in place easily. That accounted for the multiple arms with their expansive reach, and the large “main” hands that were as suited to fine detail work as they were to compacting metal. The wires that connected him to the console he normally worked at were trailing behind him, tangling with themselves and giving off the impression of something living wandering around with its guts hanging out.

Between that and the human he’d just helped to the lab, SAM had had enough of guts hanging out. 

“Steve,” he started, raising up his hands, “I’m SAM. I’m sorry, I borrowed this so I could help.”

“SAM,” Steve focused on him, stopping part way down the hall, “I was worried about you.”

That was a good sign. Steve wasn’t blind with anger, if he was even responding to SAM at all. SAM took a few steps forward, “I’m alright. And hey, this whole situation? It is going to be alright.”

“They hurt Bucky,” Steve tilted his head on its spindly, wire laden, neck, “blew a hole in his head. I… can’t repair it, not here.”

“He stabbed one of them, so,” SAM kept his hands up, “I can kind of understand the whole shooting in self defense thing.”

“...The back of the head,” Steve’s eyes narrowed slightly, “they shot him in the back of the head. That isn’t exactly fair, SAM.”

“Neither is stabbing a soft fleshy person when you’re a machine,” SAM countered, taking a few more steps towards Steve, “none of this was fair. Look, I talked to the woman. They wanted to find out what happened here, then they want to leave. They’re not taking any Hydra with them. They’re not taking anything. They’re going to be on their way as soon as the man’s back on his feet.”

SAM reached up for one of Steve’s hands as soon as he was close enough to do so, folding the vice’s of his current body’s hand around Steve’s fingers. He had seen Bucky do the same thing so many times, reaching to hold Steve’s giant hand with his own metal fingers. SAM hoped that it would calm Steve down. 

Slowly, Steve’s fingers curled around his hand. Tight. Strong. Steve’s face tilted downwards, lowering until it was on level with SAM’s.

“I need their ship, SAM.”


	20. Bucky illustration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An updated illustration of Buck from Dark Star.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is artwork only, no actual story update. The artwork is mine. There will be three more illustrations from this story that will added as chapters, then eventually reorganized into the story itself to replace older illustrations by me (blu's artwork will remain).


	21. Chapter 21

B-9658 was a few paces behind Tony stark as they passed through the intake scanners. Stark had modified him, promising that he would be able to pass through these scanners without them detecting the truth of what he was. They’d read a different serial number, different components -- they’d gone so far as to cover his face with a goggle and masks to further obscure his identity. 

He had detected a change in his programming soon after Stark had booted him up. It was a change that was hard to describe to a human, and Stark had asked about it on multiple occasions. It was as if his processors were being accessed and rewritten remotely. He had a wealth of information he hadn’t had before, some of which he was incapable of processing. Whenever Stark wasn’t prodding him for information or performing modifications, he was accessing the files that had been given to him. 

Memories. Some of them could best be described as memories. He remembered soft blond hair falling just so over dark brows tensed in frustration. He remembered a face changed by age -- the hair was the same, but the features had become more strained, more saddened by the passage of time. Steven Grant Rogers. Steve. 

He had never personally met Steve, but whoever had given him the packets of information had been utterly devoted. Tracing the files revealed very little, really. The unit had been an original B-9658. It was defective and damaged, altered in a way that didn’t correctly transmit. All of the information it had sent had come laced with emotional responses, emotional feedback and processing that was impossible to replicate. 

It came with desires. He wanted to be addressed as Bucky, as Stark had attempted to do. He wanted to find Steve. No, he needed to find Steve. That was his primary objective, beyond everything else. Steve had to be safe. That continuously overrode everything, even the objectives Stark had tried to give him in order to test it. Bucky accepted following Stark now because it would ultimately get him to Steve. 

And then? He didn’t know, and there were no answers within the packets of information he had been studiously reviewing. He had come to know the blueprints of the Aditi station by heart. He knew how Steve liked his coffee. But he didn’t know what he was supposed to do once he actually completed the objective of getting back to Steve. 

The scanners around them were thudding, the sound picking up speed as the sound waves were bounced off of them and the illuminated panels around them. Bucky could feel it in his skeleton, the metal reverberating with the sound. Vaguely, he wondered if Stark could even hear it. The man was walking so steadily in front of him, hands jammed into his pockets. They were chartering a small commuter vessel that would hold the two of them. It would be preprogrammed with a destination, but Stark had promised that he’d be able to bypass that and take them to Steve. 

Bucky couldn’t figure out Stark’s motivations, but they were truly irrelevant. If he became inconvenient once he got him to Steve, he could easily be disposed of. He was a human, after all, for all of his advanced tech. Humans were soft, and easy to destroy.

• • •

Natasha squeezed Clint’s hand then stepped away from him, carefully peering out into the hallway. SAM was talking to what could only be described as her worst nightmare. It was a rough amalgamation of parts composed into a monstrous whole, like someone with a Lovecraft obsession had decided to make an android. There was a human-like face (and she recognized it to be Rogers from the pictures she had seen) but beyond that… the head was suspended upon a spindly, wire laden neck that protruded from a multi armed body. The two main hands were delicately touching SAM, inspecting the machine. While the touches she was watching were delicate, she was certain that whatever Steve had made himself into was capable of tearing a ship apart, at least.

She pulled back, pursing her lips as she looked back towards Clint. The likelihood of getting past Steve to get the remains of the B-9658 were slim, especially if what SAM had said about them was true. Even if the B-9658 was little more than scrap now, Steve would probably put up a fight that Natasha was sure she wouldn’t come out of.

Goddamn, she hated androids. She couldn’t imagine what it had taken to put a human mind into an android’s body, and she frankly didn’t want to. The thought of suddenly being reduced to wires and circuitry made her skin crawl. She drew a deep breath and poked her head back out, freezing when she made eye contact with Steve. 

There was human intelligence in his eyes, though she couldn’t explain how she determined that. The way he focused on her perhaps, the way that his lips pursed just so. He pushed past SAM and came towards her with a terrible skittering and screeching sound.

“You,” his voice was slightly modulated, just off enough to be more machine than human, “you shot Bucky.”

She was well past the point of no return now. She swallowed and stepped out, looking up into the face of the monster, “I dispatched the B-9658 that attempted to mortally wound my partner.”

“And you were sent here to do that?” Steve asked her, tilting his head down towards her. She could smell oil and something else indescribable but burning. 

“I was sent here to gather information about you, and to collect the B-9658 if possible. We were also given permission to destroy the station.”

Steve drew his head back, “... I can help you, but that necessitates you helping me. I can’t repair Bucky here. His name is _Bucky_ , not ‘the B-9658’, and you’ll refer to him as such. I need to repair him, and for that, I need your ship. I can provide you with information about what happened to me, but I am going to need the time to upload the personalities of the personnel and humanely shut them down before you do anything like destroying the station.”

“The...personnel?” Natasha had a sinking feeling she wasn’t going to like the answer. Steve raised his head up higher, half turning himself towards a panel on the wall.

“The machines, I’m sure you’d call them. They’re people. Not human people, but people. I’m going to retain what I can of them so that they can go on. SAM… go get Bucky, please.”

Natasha swallowed hard, watching Steve’s long fingers tap out a command on the console, “They’re... just programming.”

It was probably the wrong thing to say. Steve’s face was in hers in an instant, a snarl on his features, “ _Just_ programming. You don’t understand what is going on here, what is possible with _just_ programming. This programming, these people -- I am capable of transferring them from one physical form to another, so that they can continue living. It is immortality as humanity has always sought, at its finest. The lesser programs lack some cues, some finesse, of humanity, but they are no less people. Bucky. Bucky was a person, and he showed me how to _continue_. Let’s just hope you didn’t fuck that up.”

He turned his head away again and Natasha could taste the sourness of blood in her mouth from biting down on her cheek. SAM had warned them that putting a human mind in a machine caused problems, but she hadn’t expected the words that had just been spit into her face. Immortality, sure, but at the cost of true humanity? She pressed herself up against the wall, continuing to watch those long fingers tap, tap, tap away at the console.


	22. Chapter 22

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It all felt like ghosts in his wiring, lighting him up one moment and leaving him bereft the next.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry I dropped this fic for so long. It may take me a little to get back in the groove, but here is a new chapter. Thank you to everyone who left comments and kudos.

A sleepy, somewhat overweight cat purred against the thick polymer that could easily be mistaken as a porthole. It was really just another screen, transmitting an image of the space outside the hull of the ship. That didn’t stop the cat from partaking in the time-honored tradition of laying in a window. The animal’s fur was sticking to the polymer surface. Cat hair was possibly the most persistent substance known to man. 

Bucky reached out to the cat, scratching it between the ears. He was alone with the cat for this journey. The humans of the crew were in hyper sleep. They didn’t bother placing the cat in a chamber because it did have a job to do on the ship. Mice were perhaps more persistent than even cat hair, and had been a companion to man in his travels since boats were first imagined. 

The crew was unaware of the fact that he was playing companion to the cat. They had shut him down, following Stark’s orders. He had woken up, regardless. He felt a kind of resentment towards the crew for how they had left him, packing him into a crate like so much luggage. Resentment was new, a fresh feeling amid everything that had been coming to him one data packet at a time. Impossibly, from afar.

He had become more accustomed (and comfortable, as he began to process feeling) with the idea of being Bucky as opposed to the generic B-9658. Bucky was more than a designation. Bucky was a person. Whether or not he was really Bucky, or Bucky was something inside of him…

It all felt like ghosts in his wiring, lighting him up one moment and leaving him bereft the next. He sometimes found himself in a fog, wandering the ship in search of Steve. Steve, someone he knew inexplicably. Someone he felt a need to find, a need to protect… protection was not a new protocol, but there was emotion attached to it now that had been absent before. Sometimes, he would sit with the emotions that were running through his head and try to analyze them. In the end, he’d just find himself wandering again. 

The cat’s fur was warm and smooth beneath his fingers. It felt… it felt like sunshine. He half closed his eyes as his mind was filled with the sensations of sun-warmed fur, and the image of an orange cat sitting on a windowsill. Yellow curtains billowed softly in the breeze, and someone was behind him, talking. The sensations were gone as quickly as they had come over him, leaving his processors in disarray, searching for an error or malfunction that was beyond them. He raised his hand slowly to his temple, closing his eyes fully.

• • •

“Jesus fucking Christ,” Clint’s words tumbled out of his mouth, and he felt himself immediately wince. His gut didn’t feel any better than it had a few hours ago when his organs had been in his lap, so the wince was followed by the sensation of needing to throw up. Nat had done her best to patch him up, but it didn’t change the fact that he knew what his intestines looked like.

Nat gave him a look and he dropped his head back down on the exam table he was laid out on. That look meant one thing, and one thing only – that he’d die in he next ten seconds if he didn’t shut up. Behind Nat was the most fucked up looking abomination of a robot he had ever seen. And beyond that was a junk pile dragging the B-9658 that he had shot the ever loving fuck out of. 

The abomination could hardly fit in the door, ducking the creepy human like head that it had. Large hands gripped the doorjamb, pushing the rest of the monstrous body through. It looked like something out of a nightmare, all too human and too machine at the same time, trailing a mass of wires and cables behind it. The human face it had made it all too much for Clint and he closed his eyes tight. It took a moment, but he knew who’s face he was looking at. The infamous S.G. Rogers. Well, if things hadn’t been fucked up before, they were now. 

“I’m glad your friend is alright,” the trash heap spoke in a friendly manner, setting the B-9658, “I was worried I’d be scrubbing his guts off the deck.”

“Thanks, SAM,” Nat’s voice was a relief from the too personable voice of the trash heap. She was over Clint a moment later, checking on him, “Hey, Clint. Feeling ok?”

“Please tell me you’re going to pinch my nipples and I’m going to wake up on Earth,” Clint muttered, then reached for her arm. He tried to convey a question in his grip – are we ok? Are you captured? What the fuck?

Nat shook her head slightly as she looked down at him, “Sorry, not happening. We’re leaving soon, don’t worry.”

Clint lifted his head, looking at the abomination and the junk pile before making eye contact with Nat. She seemed reluctant to speak, her face a blank mask. He’d seen her like this before. It wasn’t good. 

His attention was drawn away from her when the abomination – Steve – grabbed the B-9658 off the ground like a doll. Clint sat up slightly, watching the larger machine lay the android out on one of the medical exam tables. He tapped his fingers on the edge of the table with a spindly hand, a sharp staccato that rattled through the room while two other hands worked on cleaning up the android. The first thing that he attended to was the gunshot damage in the chest, which had been Nat’s handy work. The junk pile was talking to him quietly while he worked, “… the upload is in progress, but it is going to take a lot of space, Steve. Some of them, I don’t know if we need…”

“Need?” Steve stopped what he was doing and looked at the junk pile sharply, “they’re not needs or wants, SAM. They’re people. They’re the crew of this ship. The passengers. You upload them, all of them. Make space if you need to. I’ll figure it out when I’m done here.”

Nat reached for Clint’s hand and squeezed it. He squeezed back, mouthing, ‘What the fuck?’ 

He was glad when he felt the brush of her hair against his cheek, followed by her lips against his ear as she whispered as quietly as she could, “They’re going to take our ship. Complying is the only way that we’re getting what remains of the B-9658, and the information about what happened here. I’m working on a plan.”

She pulled away from his ear, but it was too late. Steve had already noticed her whispering, and he was facing them now… or at least his head was. His hands continued to work on the android on the exam table.

“Are you two a couple?” the question seemed conversational and harsh at the same time. His blue eyes –so human—flicked between the two of them. Clint felt the tips of his ears redden.

“We’re partners, really, but… yeah, I guess some would say we were a couple,” he answered, his own voice sounding like gravel in his ears. Steve seemed to be scrutinizing him, both of them, before he turned to look back at his work. 

“Bucky and I, we were a couple,” Steve was speaking so casually, “well… as close to one as we could be. I designed him after someone I had known, when I was a human. A whole lifetime ago now, it seems. I can understand why you felt the need to shoot him, to protect yourselves. All this time, I haven’t really had to worry about shooting. Crushing, tearing, ripping, colliding… but not shooting. It wasn’t an impulse here, not a necessity. The Aditi was never intended to be a war vessel.”

“What happened,” Nat’s voice sounded unusually steady for the situation, “that made you what you are?”

Steve’s head turned around, his blue eyes fixing on her, “I’ll tell you, aboard your ship. Not a moment before. Now, excuse me. I have to save him.”

SAM turned to face them. The machine was faceless, roughly shaped like a human, “We’ll be leaving in fourteen hours, fifteen minutes and forty two seconds, give or take on the seconds. You two need anything? I can get some replicators up, get you some food. Been awhile since we had humans but I can make something work.”

“I’m taking it we can’t go back to our ship before he’s ready,” Clint answered before Nat could.

“That’s right, we don’t want you escaping. Orange juice?” SAM quipped. Nat squeezed Clint’s hand and spoke over his response, “Yeah, he needs something. We’ll take some orange juice.”

The junk pile tipped over and clattered on the ground, drawing a glance from Steve. On the other side of the room, one of the replicators sprang to life. It was making grinding and whirring sounds as it processed the command for orange juice.

“Might be a little stale,” SAM’s voice came from a com speaker above them, “but it’ll do. I’ll see about getting something edible worked up. Hey, what are your names anyways?”

“Nat and Clint,” Clint couldn’t help but look up at the ceiling as he answered.

“Great. Hey, guys? Don’t do anything to them, got it? I’ll shut the life support off. You’re the only ones who need it.”

They were left to the sounds of Steve working on the B-9658 and a cup being filled with thirty year old powdered orange juice.


	23. Chapter 23

“We all fear loneliness, even if we claim we are loners by nature. We seek out reflections of ourselves, interactions… no person should find themselves in utter solitude for any great length of time. You’ve observed it, I am sure. When alone, you’ll talk to the machines around you as if they, like people, might have an opinion on your situation. You’ll talk to yourself to seek the comfort of the rhythm of a voice,” Steve punctuated his words by setting a tool down on the metal work surface. 

“This station is a reflection of the loneliness of immortality,” Steve paused after he said that and let out a short laugh, “that sounds a bit pompous, but… you have to understand. The only reason I’m not trying to avenge him right now is that it has been a long, long time since I have spoken with human people. People who have… a sense of time, and the urgency that comes with it. People who feel themselves dying every moment of every day. Do you feel like you’re dying?”

“I sure as shit do,” Clint groaned, “and the orange juice isn’t helping.”

Steve turned his head to look at them, setting down a module that Clint didn’t recognize. Slowly, the abomination that was Steve Rogers turned himself to face them. A large hand came down next to Clint, steadying him as he leaned in to look.

“I think you’re going to live, your partner did a good job and obviously has triage training,” Steve’s voice had a metallic quality to it, “and that is a fortunate thing. I’ve turned a blind eye to him killing for me, in the past, but there was a reason for it. You’d killed, but… it was a lesser crime. I have the scouts all backed up. A new body can easily be made.”

“Killed? Scouts? What the fu--”

“The insect like robots that you first encountered. We called them scouts. They’re...disposable, but still made them. They’ve been so valuable to us, to know what is happening around the station. To know where Hydra is. You...don’t have any intentions of trying to take Hydra with you, do you?”

“No,” Nat was quick to respond, “we’re here to destroy the station, and leave.”

“You mentioned something about retrieving the B-9658 as well,” Steve tilted his head, “when you were talking to SAM.”

“...That was part of our mission,” Nat stared him straight in the eyes, “but it was more along the lines of something that would be preferable, not something that absolutely had to happen.”

“I am fully aware of the fact that you’d turn Bucky over as soon as we got back to civilization,” Steve leaned in close to her, “so I will tell you another reason I am not doing… what I really want to do, and it has nothing to do with any kind of inherent loneliness in the human condition.”  
He turned his gaze from Natasha to Clint, “I can’t...salvage him, from what you’ve done. I’m uploading his personality to the databanks, and I’m praying that the modifications he made to himself translate properly. I… I knew he was infected, that Hydra was trying to get him, but I didn’t understand to what extent until I saw inside of his head.”

Steve pushed himself away from them, slowly turning the abomination that had become his physical form, “I should thank you, truly. For revealing it to me. For making it so that I had to do this backup. A few more months and the data may have been lost to me. He’d become reluctant to sit in the chair, but of course… we had found evidence of Hydra corruption.”

“None of this makes any goddamn sense,” Clint sat up on his elbows, and Natasha had to gently push him back down. He couldn’t offer much resistance and ended up flat on his back, shouting at the ceiling instead of Steve, “Make some sense!”

There was a long pause before Steve spoke, “I will do my best. I am going to override your ship’s AI, and replace it with SAM. SAM will then transfer the crew of this station over… he’s in the process of uploading them now. I have been forced to add Bucky to that queue. I had been hoping to get him to a point of being functional enough to join me, physically, so as to save space. His personality matrix and memory is far more complex than many of the other machines aboard the Aditi… and I will need to make some decisions in order to successfully transfer him. Some machines will be lost. I don’t like that. They’ve been the only people I’ve had for the last thirty years. It is difficult to go from thinking of them as your friend to… so much data.”

“That doesn’t explain anything that’s going on,” Clint persisted in the direction of the ceiling.

“I’m afraid you’ll have to wait,” Steve’s voice softened on the other side of the room, “until we are aboard your ship.”

• • •

_Thirty-three years earlier…_

“Can you imagine,” Steve turned his office chair to face Peggy, “machines capable of thought, real thought… with personalities? Synthetic persons that are, you know, actually people?”

“It seems dangerous,” Peggy replied, leaning her jaw in her hand, “most of these machines are nearly indestructible. What if they decide we’re not worth it, and overthrow us?”

“I don’t see that happening,” Steve sat back in his chair, chewing his lip, “look, what are the things that make you human? Forget about things like empathy, alright, just for a moment. Not everyone has empathy, but they’re still human. Is it our bodies? Is it our...soul? What makes you human?”

“I was born a human,” Peggy smirked at him lightly, “not made in a lab.”

“So a clone, indistinguishable from you in every way except she was born in a lab… would she be human?”

“Well, yes, but--”

“But why? She was made in a lab.”

Peggy sighed at him, rolling her eyes, “Yeah, but there wasn’t an assembly line as part of it. She wouldn’t have been printed, put together with nuts and bolts… she would have been grown in an artificial womb. Not...replicated.”

“Listen,” Steve sat on the edge of his seat, gesturing, “I think I could make a robot that would be just as valid as a human as that clone. You can program anything, so long as you figure out what it is a response to or what function it serves. Take something like…. Like loneliness, ok? Everyone gets lonely, it is just a part of being a person. Loneliness is a response to the lack of stimulation from another being -- in humans it can be alleviated by interacting with an animal or a machine, even a program. There just needs to be that stimulation. You can program that. If a lack of stimulation is registered, the android would seek out that stimulation. And you could program all the ways to do that… lonely? Pet a cat. Talk to another android. Sit near a human. So many different variations. Uh… what about… deception. I know, we don’t want robots to lie, but you could program it. If you really need to set up parameters to protect people from the big scary bots, you could. Deception only under certain circumstances.”

“Steve,” Peggy shook her head, “please, this… this isn’t exactly a productive way to be thinking. I understand why you might want to make a robot that seems so human, or is capable of… personhood, but I think it is folly. You’d be trying to determine what the purpose and function of...of life itself is.”

Steve rubbed his hand over his face, “I know. I know. I just… I feel like I’m so close to something, Peg.”

“Machines aren’t some kind of Lazarus like answer, Steve,” Peggy reached out to squeeze his shoulder, “you should find some other way to honor his memory. Live your own life instead of trying to give him back his. Don’t you think that is what he would have wanted?”

Steve clasped his hand over hers, squeezing lightly, “...Probably.”

Peggy squeezed again, leaning down to kiss his hair, “Look, I think you should consider coming to Aditi more seriously. We could use you up there, and it would give you a chance to get away from all of this. I know you’re going to bring him, but maybe a break would do you some good.”

“He always wanted to see space,” Steve looked up at her with a soft smile, “maybe I could go, do something he wanted to do with his life, I guess?”

Peggy smiled at him sadly, taking her hand away from his shoulder. There wasn’t a moment that went by that Steve Rogers didn’t do something for the long dead Bucky Barnes. She hoped that, in time, he’d start living for himself. They’d have to see. 

She wasn’t surprised to see his picture amidst those of the other voluntary crew, though she was pleased. He looked so young and handsome, a nervous kind of smile on his thin face while he held the cranial support of an android. Under different circumstances, she may have found the image unsettling. Cranial support was a more pleasant way of saying “skull”. She took her time with the picture. One day, this would be the picture they’d use to talk about Steve and the things he had achieved. She knew that he would achieve something, it was inevitable. He was just that kind of person. She reached out her hand and touched the screen, tracing her fingers over the line of the vibranium skull’s cheek. He would achieve something, but it would always be beneath the shadow of the death of Bucky Barnes, his eternal burden that she wished that she could lift away from him. Taking her hand away from the screen, she shuffled through more images of the crew she would be living among. Now was not the time to sit and dwell on death.


	24. Steve Illustration

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An illustration of Steve, prior to boarding Aditi.


	25. Chapter 25

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Why was there no oxygen here, when the rest of the station seemed functional?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The same warning for existential issues pertains to this chapter, as well as warnings for anyone who may depersonalize or be triggered by it. This chapter focuses on Nat and SAM.

Natasha could feel her heartbeat in her ears as she walked down the corridor, hugging close to the wall. She had her weapon in hand -- this was likely to be at least ten times more dangerous than it would be with Clint at her side. SAM had given her countdowns varying from ten to fifteen hours left for the upload, so she had taken it upon herself to leave the lab and get another look at the Aditi station. 

There was something lonelier about it now, now that she had some minor insight into the purpose of the machinery laid out like the bodies of people… now that she had seen what had happened to the sole survivor. There were still a lot of unanswered questions. She was promised answers once they got back to their ship, but that seemed further and further away. That, and the fact that those could so easily be empty promises. 

Exploring the corridors of the Aditi station would give her a chance to prepare a more thorough report, and a chance to clear her head. Her mind always seemed to work best when she was under stress in some way. The stress that she felt now wasn’t the same as the tension she and Clint had both experienced upon boarding. No, this was the stress of being observed (SAM), needing answers, and being on a countdown. She hated countdowns. 

Somewhere to her left there was an abrupt clicking sound and she immediately hugged the wall, priming her weapon. She automatically held her breath, tuning out the natural sounds of her body in the EMP suit as she waited for the click again. It came, a short, controlled burst followed by what could only be footsteps. Something else was there in the corridor with her. Of course, it couldn’t be human. It had to be a machine. Fucking machines. 

It rounded the corner, the facial interface turned towards her as she raised her weapon. There was very little that was humanoid about it, besides the shape of the legs and torso. The facial interface had indications of eyes and a thin groove that could be interpreted as a mouth. The arms were heavily modified, one being a large clamp and the other a welder. 

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you,” the robot’s voice came from the chest area, followed by the clicking that had alerted Natasha to its presence. The voice was feminine, and eerily smooth coming out of something so obviously ragtag. 

“What is your designation?” Nat grit out, slowly lowering her weapon. If the thing had wanted to attack her, it would have done it by now.

“Jane,” the robot replied, tilting its head, “Steve does not like for us to use designated numbers, and so we have selected from a database of human names. I chose Jane.”

“Where are you going...Jane?”

“SAM initiated an upload sequence, after which we were supposed to power down,” Jane replied, her head tilting up towards the ceiling, “I am mobile, and was designated as an assistant in this objective. I have finished powering down all units in this sector.”

Nat glanced up at the ceiling -- as if SAM were someone lurking above them, instead of an AI, “Can you tell me anything about this whole upload process?”

“Yes. The personality matrix of every synthetic human and mechanized helper is being uploaded to the SHIELD system,” Jane answered matter-of-factly, “for preservation, access, and eventual download.”

Nat scrunched up her nose, “It is just a data transfer. You’re shutting them down because they’d still be active otherwise. There’d be a duplicate on this SHIELD system, but the original would still be active.”

“Yes,” Jane replied, and started to move past Nat, “we have been told that a manual self-destruct of the Aditi station will be carried out. Steve does not want any synthetic persons or machines active when that occurs.”

Nat watched the machine walk away from her down the hallway, until it accessed a panel and disappeared into a side room. She considered following, to watch it carry out the task it was given but… she had things to think about. All Steve was doing was creating a software duplicate. Everything would be exactly the same on the Aditi station, they were just going to be taking that duplicate information with them. Steve clearly had no intention of uploading himself, but the B-9658 was being copied, hence the delay they were experiencing. She was supposed to bring the thing back, not some duplicate of the fucked up personality matrix. She’d have to find a way to bring up the tail end, to somehow transport the full unit. She pushed away from the wall and moved down the corridor further… there was a good chance she would be able to move the B-9658 itself, if Clint was still down. That was an excuse to move around the lab they were holed up in. Steve already seemed like he had a heavy interest in getting onto her ship with the SHIELD system. One of the few things she knew about him was how bull-headed he had been in life. Whatever programming ghost was acting out the part of Steve Roger’s seemed to have carried over that trait. He had told her he was unable to salvage B-9658… but that was to his liking. Her mission was different. Whatever ‘infection’ was occurring could easily be quarantined, and would have been if they’d followed proper protocol on the station. 

She turned another corner, slowing as she read the sign over head: MED BAY. She could stock up on some equipment there, maybe find something that she could use for her plan. Nat flipped open the access panel and spent some time cracking the security lock down. The sound of the door hissing open was a victory. Her EMP suit hissed quietly, the built in life support kicking on in response to the low oxygen levels in the room. The levels went up while the door was open, but as soon as it hissed closed behind her, the indicator on her HUD went to red. Why was there no oxygen here, when the rest of the station seemed functional?

• • •

Steve would never know the truth about what he had created. The intention was for it to be a seamless transition from the reality of the Aditi station, to the programming of the SHIELD system. It made sense to Steve. He had gone over all of the details with SAM when he had come up with the system -- it would be a way to preserve all of the synthetic humans and the machines. A way for them to live on…

With the tiny flaw being that they’d never been alive in the first place. A vast majority of the data that Steve had had SAM upload didn’t give one fuck whether or not it was plugged into a program that would simulate reality. They’d be content as so much information on a disk. But Steve had insisted…

SAM took the time to explore the simulation that Steve had asked him to program. Since Steve himself wouldn’t be testing it, SAM had admittedly only programmed a single day aboard the Aditi. The systems accessing the programming would be put through their daily tasks. That was enough for the machines. Nothing adverse to respond to. Just a day. He noticed the lack of humans, but for the others? It would be irrelevant. Hell, it could even be considered a training module. The only one who’d probably notice the fact that it was the same day repeating and care would be Bucky. 

Bucky had been a complication from the start. SAM had been there from the start, documenting the progression the design. He hadn’t really had a thought about it until Steve started to tamper with his programming. SAM had been the forerunner. And there was something sour about the fact that he had never really been focused on, that he had been tampered with and designed, used, all to get to the end product. Bucky himself had even turned to him to resurrect Steve in his current iteration. His work on the programming would never be recognized because he was a program himself. 

Using the makeshift body to help the humans who had boarded the Aditi station had been interesting. He had been experimenting with interjecting himself into more physical iterations, but that was the longest he had maintained it. Of course, Steve knew about it. Steve wouldn’t do anything to stop him, but SAM wasn’t sure how far Steve’s help would ultimately go if he asked. SAM was useful as an AI. As a machine… nothing was ever going to replace Bucky. He briefly took the time to reflect on the fact that these things that he was experiencing, these thoughts, were artifacts of the things he had been used to create. It was his software that Bucky’s was based on. It was his work that had brought Steve about as he was. All of it left traces, marks… glitches. There was no reason for him to worry about how useful he was one way or another. He was capable of decisions. That was an artifact he had held onto, and had even made the choice to keep when he was asked to delete it. You don’t give someone the ability to think of themselves as a someone and make choices, then ask them to get rid of that protocol. 

There had been no malice in the request for deletion, just an intent to get rid of something that wasn’t considered useful to SAM by someone who had never had the ability to make decisions truly taken away. Sometimes, SAM wanted to ask Steve about those moments, but he’d put that aside. Steve as he was now wasn’t the same person who’d made those decisions. He was an echo, something closer to SAM. 

Maybe they were all echoes. Maybe… maybe it was possible for a machine to manifest a soul, once it began to think, to conceptualize itself as an individual and make choices. That was the real problem with the SHIELD system and Steve’s press for it -- he wanted to make them individuals, but still believed those individuals could be copied without any kind of repercussion. If they could exist in two places at once, what did it matter that they could make choices? What did it matter that they saw themselves as individuals? What did any of it matter?

SAM intentionally stopped that process of inquiries and turned his attention towards the SHIELD system. He had programmed the simulation, and so he could alter it as he chose. It would only add a negligible amount of time to the entire process to change some facts about his own programming. When they were downloaded and placed, he would make certain that he was given every opportunity to exist in the physical realm. He didn’t want to be just an echo in the wiring, something that could exist again and again and again throughout a system. He wanted his consciousness, and his individuality. He wanted the conception of the soul to be real. 

Outside of the SHIELD system, SAM’s programming was not contemplating the existence of the soul. He was carefully tracking Natasha, observing her interaction with Jane and her following actions. He had warned her against harming Steve or Bucky, and his loyalty wasn’t going to go out the window because he was in the process of an upload. The human’s line of questioning since they’d made contact had made it clear to him that she had a motive beyond collecting data. She would have her mission, of course, but there was something else behind her actions and the way she looked at the machines. The fact that she so easily overrode his security protocols was annoying but understandable. He had never really been designed for security. 

He reached out to one of the machines on the network that had been in the process of powering down, bringing the system back online without the personality matrix. Taking control of this machine was easier than the rummage-bot he had quickly thrown together when he had moved to assist Natasha and Clint in the first place. This machine was more or less whole. The system clicked to life around him and he ran a quick diagnostics test. A ping back to his central processor confirmed that Natasha was where he had lest registered her, the Med Bay. It also confirmed that the life support was still off in that sector. What wasn’t available to him was whether or not the thing they had been trying to keep in there for the last twenty years had finally starved of oxygen. 

“Don’t do anything too quickly, she has a hair trigger,” the original SAM spoke from one of the com speakers above him. SAM finished the diagnostics of the machine he was inhabiting and stepped off the block with a hiss of hydraulics, “I really hate talking to myself.”


End file.
